The Trump "U" Scam

There’s a reason Donald Trump wanted people to pay attention to his nonsense about the veterans’ donations yesterday.

As a reminder for that nonstop train wreck, yesterday Trump finally provided a list that still fell short of the $6 million in donations raised he claimed back in January at a fundraiser that was his excuse for not attending a GOP debate and only followed through with donations after the Washington Post shamed him into overnighting checks to vets groups. That’d be a candidate-sinking scandal in its own right, but Trump’s no ordinary candidate. When he goes for scandals, he goes yuge.

The real problem for Trump was on the legal front that showed his scam school was indeed a scam and fraud and more.

In sworn testimony, former workers for Donald Trump’s “Trump University” stated under oath that Trump was deeply involved in devising sales pitches and other aspects of the operation. He was busy signing off personally on the sales pitches that helped his scam school part the marks (students) from their money. People paid thousands of dollars (some paid upwards of $30,000) to hear how to make money in real estate, but it turns out to have been nothing but a scam.

People who worked for Trump were admonished because they weren’t effectively parting their marks from their money fast enough:

One sales manager for Trump University, Ronald Schnackenberg, recounted how he was reprimanded for not pushing a financially struggling couple hard enough to sign up for a $35,000 real estate class, despite his conclusion that it would endanger their economic future. He watched with disgust, he said, as a fellow Trump University salesman persuaded the couple to purchase the class anyway.

“I believe that Trump University was a fraudulent scheme,” Mr. Schnackenberg wrote in his testimony, “and that it preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money.”

This testimony from a Trump U sales manager is going around a lot this morning. Here it is in their words. pic.twitter.com/o49AnvRAyh

— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) June 1, 2016

Trump’s entire scam was targeting people who didn’t have the kind of disposable income to attend those paid sessions.

This only skims the surface, given that New York had been trying to get Trump to stop calling his scam school a university since 2005 (and he relented on the name change in 2010). The name of Trump’s scam school was a big no-no. In New York, you have to have accreditation to be considered a university, so he violated state law on that. “University” has a very specific definition, and Trump’s scam didn’t meet that definition. A New York judge ruled in 2014 that Trump never obtained the necessary licensing and held Trump personally liable. Cue the Trump standard response – poo flinging at the judge overseeing the case (rinse and repeat for the CA case too).

But the real issue is that he was using this entire enterprise not to help people, but to help himself to other people’s money. That was the whole point of plunking down upwards of $30,000 to hear a bunch of drones speak on about how you too can make money like Donald Trump in real estate. If you stick around and pay a few more thousands, I’ll tell you one trick that will change your life.

How many people want to admit that they spent their life savings on, or, who had to go into debt to pay for, a scam? Enough, it seems. Because all the latest info about the scam school comes from class action suits.

Other employees recounted how they would try and get students to open up multiple credit cards so that they could rack up sizable debt so as to pay for the “courses/materials.” And what value did any of this actually have? None. Because the materials were so vague and useless that they barely count as toilet paper.

Trump faces lawsuits on both coasts. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s lawsuit will be going to trial, despite Trump’s attempts to block it. New York is seeking to recover more than $40 million in fees collected by Trump’s scam school. The California action is the class action suit that hit the jackpot with the exhibits released yesterday afternoon.

Despite all this, there are people who defend Trump’s actions. I find that puzzling and not all at the same time. It’s cognitive dissonance and partisan politics all rolled into one melange of hate. After all, if Trump goes down due to the scam school lawsuits, it means that Democrats would have a clear path to the White House and the Stop Hillary movement is far more unifying than the Never Trump meme ever could be.

Even people who were scammed by Trump and wanted their money back think Trump was more trustworthy than President Obama.

“He says what he means, not like politicians, not like Obama,” said Louie Liu of Hurst, Tex. Liu, a motel owner, said in a sworn affidavit that he paid $1,495 for a three-day seminar, then felt lured into paying $24,995 for more classes, an online training program and a three-day in-person mentorship. A few days later, he called to ask for a refund, but his request was rejected. Trump University, he concluded, was a “scam.”

Think about that kind of pretzel logic for a moment.

That’s what this year’s presidential election is about – overcoming this kind of demented pretzel logic that has someone who was scammed and admits it, think that he’s still the better candidate.

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