The Scathing Claim One Of Donald Trump's College Professors Reportedly Made About Him
The Trumps as a family are fairly well educated with their patriarch Donald Trump helping lead the way with a degree from the prestigious Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. However, it turns out that he may not have been a model student. Attorney Frank DiPrima revealed what former Wharton marketing professor William T. Kelley told him about Trump, and it wasn't a very flattering picture. Kelley, who retired from teaching in the 1980s, even went so far as to reportedly call Trump "dumb," per Philadelphia Magazine. "He must have told me that 100 times over the course of 30 years," DiPrima said.
But it wasn't just that Kelley thought Trump wasn't very smart. "I remember the inflection of his voice when he said it," Di Prima said of Kelley. "'Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had!' He would say that [Trump] came to Wharton thinking he already knew everything, that he was arrogant and he wasn't there to learn." Kelley likely taught hundreds of students over the years, so it seems like Trump made quite the negative impression.
We don't have any hard evidence to prove or refute Kelley's assessment of Trump as a student because Trump hasn't released those records. While there may be disagreements over how well grades show someone's quality as a student, with Trump's college records, there are rumors that it doesn't show him as having the best grades, which could be a confirmation of Kelley's opinion of Trump.
Donald Trump has kept his grades private
There's been a fair amount of back and forth about college transcripts when it comes to Donald Trump, which seems like if they were made public, could easily disprove William T. Kelley's assessment. In 2012, Trump asked then-president Barack Obama to release his college records. The Guardian followed up by reaching out to Trump's team at the time to see if Trump would also be releasing his own records after the call for Obama's. They reportedly got in touch with Michael Cohen, Trump's then lawyer and fixer, told them that Trump's records didn't need to come out because, "Mr Trump's not the president of the United States and he's not running for the presidency."
However, when Trump was, in fact, running for the presidency in 2015, Cohen, who is now ashamed of his long-time connection with Trump, changed his tune. He testified before Congress that he warned educational institutions that Trump attended to not release his transcripts or any other records about him or face legal action.
In the 1970s, Trump was reported to have graduated top of his class at Wharton. However, there doesn't seem to be a record of that or of any honors that Trump received from the university upon graduation.
Donald Trump's brother called Wharton about his admission
Donald Trump did write a bit about his time at Wharton in his book "Trump: The Art of the Deal." In one passage, he wrote (via The Daily Pennsylvanian), "In my opinion, that degree doesn't prove very much, but a lot of people I do business with take it very seriously, and it's considered very prestigious." Whatever grades he got at Wharton, he's certainly bragged about his time there. In a 2015 interview with Chris Cuomo on CNN, Trump said: "I went to the hardest school to get into, the best school in the world I guess you could say. ... super genius stuff."
It may have been more than Trump's intellect that got him into Wharton. Trump started college at Fordham University in 1964, and he transferred to Wharton in 1966 after Trump's older brother Fred Trump Jr. reportedly put in a call for him. James Nolan, a friend of Trump Jr.'s, was employed in the admissions office at Wharton in the 1960s, and he told The Washington Post that he got a call from Trump Jr. asking him to do Trump's admissions interview. Nolan told the outlet some of what he could remember about Trump's admission interview, saying: "I certainly was not struck by any sense that I'm sitting before a genius. Certainly not a super genius." He also noted that the acceptance rate to the Ivy League school in the 1960s was much higher than it is today.