Once again, Donald Trump raises an important issue about President Obama, but, then in the next breath, puts his foot into his mouth. He’s right to question “Obama’s refusal to release his college grades” and to point out that this refusal is “part of a pattern of concealing information about himself.” But, he’s wrong to speculate that “Obama had been a poor student who did not deserve to be admitted to the Ivy League universities he attended.”
One thing we do know about the president’s academic record is that “he graduated magna cum laude” from Harvard Law School. You don’t graduate magna cum laude if you’re not qualified to attend an institution. To graduate magna cum laude, you often have to be in the top 10, if not 5% of your class. One blogger has looked into this more deeply than I have and contends “Obama finished in, say, the top 30% or 40% at HLS in grades.” Still not too shabby.
Not just that, most law schools have a policy of blind grading (and my preliminary research indicates that Harvard had such a system in place when Obama was a student there) which means his professors wouldn’t know whose exam they were grading, thus law school grading provides a pretty reliable measure of a student’s aptitude, not colored by the professor’s affection for the student (or concern about how much money his family could donate to the school).
If, at worst, Obama was in the top 40%, he was above the median GPA for his class. If he didn’t deserve to be admitted to Harvard Law, then the majority of his class didn’t merit admission either.
In her article on Trump’s latest (and apparently successful) attempt to raise questions about Obama’s refusal to release his records, the AP’s Beth Fouhy includes this line, “The so-called “birther” controversy has dominated the early stage of the 2012 GOP nominating contest, with Trump leading the charge.” Seems someone wants to make it appear the GOP is obsessed with birther-ism.
Hey, Beth, most Republicans aren’t even paying attention to the contest right now, just political junkies. And the news media.
Agreed, but TRUMP should stop harping on this and harp on the real things that OBAMA has done or hasn’t done. Such as CHINA, Obamacare, the DEBT ceiling, the deficit, LIBYA, etc…
Why harp on this? and yes we all know OBAMA is dumb because he can’t give a speech without a teleprompter but even so he still went to the HARVARD, which means he was somewhat smart.
Is it the AP or Beth Foughy, an AP writer. . .?
Obama has been under scrutiny for a long time. . .and wouldn’t his creative team looked at most of these claims a long time ago and developed a plan. Obama uses his ‘non-disclosure’ stance very well.
and besides, if the media attention focus on the birther issue burns bright, what other folk benefit from hiding in the shadows of the MSM OCD. ie, mr neveda, ensign slipping out of town quietly comes to mind.
Sarah Palin stopped doing interviews along time ago. . .The Donald takes every request.
Come on, it’s not like anyone is seriously considering Donald Trump for any ‘Conservative’ savior role.
We know he’s not a Conservative. We all have eyes.
I still doubt that he’s actually running for President.
But in his role as provocateur, he’s performing a valuable public service. He is calling bullshit, bullshit. He is turning every persuasive media trick on it’s head, and using it against the ENDORSED candidate of the mainstream media.
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Trump: Obama a “Terrible Student” Not Good Enough for Harvard – NBC New York
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Trump-Obama-Wasnt-Good-Enough-to-Get-into-Ivy-Schools-120657869.html
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Unfortunately, the majority of the GOP potential candidates spend the majority of their time saying dumb and/or false things (Trump, Palin, Gingrich, and Bachmann being consistent examples, but heck, even Romney’s “peace time” editorial wasn’t so swift). If accurately reporting on what the leading lights / most popular current candidates and figures (which certainly includes Trump) of the GOP are doing and saying makes the GOP look stupid, I’d blame the candidates who are doing and saying stupid things, rather than, you know, the people who are merely recording and reporting those things. If you want to be taken seriously, start drafting candidates who are more serious than those listed above.