Posted on 02/27/2016 12:19:21 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Many people believe that higher education is a de facto scam. Trump University, Donald Trump's real-estate institution, was a de jure one.
First thing first, Trump University was never a university. When the "school" was established in 2005, the New York State Education Department warned that it was in violation of state law for operating without a NYSED license. Trump ignored the warnings. (The institution is now called, ahem, "Trump Entrepreneur Initiative.") Cue lawsuits.
Trump University is currently the defendant in three lawsuits - two class-action lawsuits filed in California, and one filed in New York by then-attorney general Eric Schneiderman, who told CNN's New Day in 2013: "We started looking at Trump University and discovered that it was a classic bait-and-switch scheme. It was a scam, starting with the fact that it was not a university."
Trump U "students" say the same. In his affidavit, Richard Hewson reported that he and his wife "concluded that we had paid over $20,000 for nothing, based on our belief in Donald Trump and the promises made at the [organization’s] free seminar and three-day workshop." But "the whole thing was a scam."
In fact, $20,000 is only a mid-range loss. The lead plaintiff in one of the California suits, yoga instructor Tarla Makaeff, says she was "scammed" out of $60,000 over the course of her time in Trump U.
How could that have happened? The New York suit offers a suggestion:
The free seminars were the first step in a bait and switch to induce prospective students to enroll in increasingly expensive seminars starting with the three-day $1495 seminar and ultimately one of respondents’ advanced seminars such as the "Gold Elite" program costing $35,000.
At the "free" 90-minute introductory seminars to which Trump University advertisements and solicitations invited prospective students, Trump University instructors engaged in a methodical, systematic series of misrepresentations designed to convince students to sign up for the Trump University three-day seminar at a cost of $1495.
The Atlantic, which got hold of a 41-page "Private & Confidential" playbook from Trump U, has attested to the same:
The playbook says almost nothing about the guest speaker presentations, the ostensible reason why people showed up to the seminar in the first place. Instead, the playbook focuses on the seminars' real purpose: to browbeat attendees into purchasing expensive Trump University course packages.
To do that, instructors touted Trump's own promises: that students would be "mentored" by "handpicked" real-estate experts, who would use Trump's own real-estate strategies. Here’s Trump making the pitch himself:
But according to the New York complaint, none of the instructors was "handpicked" by Trump, many of them came from fields having nothing to do with real-estate, and Trump "'never' reviewed any of Trump University's curricula or programming materials." The materials were "in large part developed by a third-party company that creates and develops materials for an array of motivational speakers and seminar and timeshare rental companies."
Furthermore, Trump's promises that the three-day seminar ($1,495) would include "access to 'private' or 'hard money' lenders and financing," that it would include a "year-long 'apprenticeship support' program," and that it would 'improve the credit scores' of students were empty.
Those empty promises are the subject of a new series of anti-Trump ads by superPAC American Future Fund:
According to Bob, "I never heard from anybody about giving me a list of hard-money lenders":
Kevin, another Trump U "student," says Trump University "ruined" his credit score:
And according to Sherri, a single mother who participated in Trump U: "It was all supposedly supervised by Donald Trump, run by Donald Trump. All of it was just a fake."
In fact, Sherri isn't alone. No student ever met the Donald. Despite hints from Trump University instructors that Trump was "going to be in town," "often drops by," or "might show up," he never did. As Matt Labash recounted in The Weekly Standard: "At one seminar, attendees were told they’d get to have their picture taken with Trump. Instead, they ended up getting snapped with his cardboard cutout." Bob.., had such an "opportunity":
There could be many more ads to come. The New York lawsuit alone represents some 5,000 victims.
Meanwhile, Trump - who maintains that Trump University was "a terrific school that did a fantastic job" - has tried to bully his opponents out of the suit. Lawyers for Tarla Makaeff have requested a protective order from the court "to protect her from further retaliation." According to court documents, Trump has threatened to sue Makaeff personally, as well as her attorneys. He's already brought a $100 million counterclaim against the New York attorney general's office.
But it's not working. Trump himself will have to take the witness stand in San Diego federal court sometime during the election season - and because of the timeline of the cases, a "President Trump" would be embroiled in these suits long after November.
Meanwhile, if there is any doubt that Trump U was designed to be a scam, The Atlantic puts that to rest with a few other choice tidbits from that "Private & Confidential" playbook used by Trump presenters:
Every university has admission standards and Trump University was no exception. The playbook spells out the one essential qualification in caps: "ALL PAYMENTS MUST BE RECEIVED IN FULL." Basically, anyone with a valid credit card was “admitted” to Trump University....
If a member of the media happened to approach the registration table, Trump staffers were instructed not to talk to him or her under any circumstance. "Reporters are rarely on your side and they are not sympathetic," the playbook advises.
And:
At one point, the playbook advises Trump staffers: "If a district attorney arrives on the scene, contact the appropriate media spokesperson immediately."
Sounds legit.
Indeed, the seriousness of the allegation trumps the sobriety of justice.
Actually there was an article about time-share companies starting to do some self-policing, so yea, not so bad anymore.
SCAM spelled T-R-U-M-P:
noun:
1. a dishonest scheme; a fraud.
“an insurance scam”
synonyms: fraud, swindle, fraudulent scheme, racket, trick;
pharming; informalcon, hustle, flimflam, bunco, grift, gyp, shakedown
“the scam involved a series of bogus investment deals”
verb:
1. swindle.
“a guy that scams the elderly out of their savings”
synonyms: swindle, cheat, deceive, trick, dupe, hoodwink, double-cross, gull; informal rip off, con, fleece, shaft, hose, sting, bilk, diddle, rook, gyp, finagle, bamboozle, flimflam, put one over on, pull a fast one on, sucker, stiff, shake down, hornswoggle
“he was trying to scam residents with phony insurance policies”
And everyone that was an Amway distributor became a millionaire.
I saw the advertising for Trump's "university" in Los Angeles. It was no different than the advertising for Tony Robbins, Amway, etc.
Anyone who went assuming they were getting more than a rah-rah speech was an idiot to begin with.
People shouldn't get to sue for being idiots that got suckered out of their money.
So what you’re saying is that Trump gets things done! Outstanding endorsement!
Yes it does; thank you very much.
Now, since Trump has praise Obama, that makes Trump obviously far worse than Cruz.
Where has Trump praised Obama and in what context?
From your Wiki link:
*******************************
.........”Trump has given conflicting stories. In his infomercial he said:
“And honestly, if you don’t learn from them, if you don’t learn from me, if you don’t learn from the people that we’re going to be putting forward, and these are all people handpicked by me, then you’re just not going to make it in terms of world-class success.”
He testified in a 2012 deposition that, contrary to the Trump University sales materials and statements he made in the infomercial to the media, he neither selected the instructors nor oversaw the curriculum.”............
******************************
Trump’s slick sales pitch about the professors and adjunct professors, all the top notch instructors he was setting up for them - 2:16 minutes - is even more stomach turning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvaaeHP9xtQ
So the deviant perverted socialist communist professors who conduct classes in our astronomically expensive universities where student and parent are strapped with decades of debt and who’s curriculum is falsely presented to parents in a hard sell introduction “though they are licensed” are ok.
First, the allegations are not advance by one person alone but they are advanced by a group action lawsuit indicating that there are multiple person to feel aggrieved and they are advanced by two attorneys general indicating that these public officials performed, or were duty bound to perform, their ethical obligation to weigh the equities before they brought action.
Donald Trump has not answered these allegations except to deny them in general and to try to intimidate those who seek redress. There is very little doubt that he has sought to intimidate the plaintiffs. This too is but a piece in a pattern of sleazy behavior by Donald Trump. He tried, for example, to intimidate by litigation the economics author who exposed him for Taj Mahal. That failed. Donald Trump does not come forward with exculpatory evidence but merely wades deeper into the sleaze.
Donald Trump seeks a position in which his character is all we have between his finger and the nuclear button. We don't have the slightest hesitation in declaring Hillary Clinton is disqualified from that position because of her character. Donald Trump is similarly disqualified and there is example, after example, after example to justify that statement.
Trump praises Obama here:
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0904/15/lkl.01.html
KING: There are a lot of great topics. One of them is Barack Obama. In fact, the list at the back of the book on the topics, the number one is, “Barack Obama’s election ushers in a different world.”
How do you assess him?
TRUMP: Well, I really like him. I think that he’s working very hard. He’s trying to rebuild our reputation throughout the world. I mean, we really have lost a lot of reputation in the world. The previous administration was a total disaster, a total catastrophe.
And, you know, the world looks at us differently than they used to. And I think he’s trying to restore our reputation within the world. And he was handed a pretty bad deck of cards. I mean, he was given a pretty tough situation.
And I’m not saying I agree with everything he’s doing. I do agree with what they’re doing with the banks. Whether they fund them or nationalize them, it doesn’t matter, but you have to keep the banks going.
Beyond that, I’m not so sure I agree with it, because I...I am worried, ultimately, about inflation. If you take this much money and keep pouring it into the economy, I worry about what’s going to happen in two years with respect to not only interest rates, but inflation.
KING: Do you have any regrets about endorsing McCain?
TRUMP: No. I’ve known John for a long time. And I’ve never met our current president. And I look forward to doing it. But I’ve known John, really, for a long time. He’s a good man. He’s a quality man. So certainly I have no regrets about that.
KING: Any advice — it may be presumptuous to say this — but any advice you’d give the president — something you think he should do he’s not doing?
TRUMP: Well, I think what he is doing and what he wasn’t doing initially is talking up the economy, talking up the country. I think he’s really gone from maybe not doing it so much at the beginning — and, in fact, he was being criticized for it — to really doing it in spades. And I think that’s good.
I think he’s talking up the country. I think he’s talking up — starting to talk up the economy.
And, you know, economy is largely a psychological thing. If people think the banks are weak, the country is going to be weak. Now, the problem is, the banks are weak. We know they’re weak. They’re not loaning money.
Now he has to get the banks to go in and start loaning the money.
KING: Why does he retain this incredible popularity?
TRUMP: Well, I think he’s sort of a guy that just has a wonderful personality, a good speaker, somebody that people trust. And I also think that the comparison with his predecessor is so different — it’s so huge that it really has made a great impact on people.
I think that he’s really doing a nice job in terms of representation of this country. And he represents such a large part of the country.
I mean, to think that a black man was going to be elected president — I watched television for years where the great political analysts were saying maybe in 50, maybe in 100 years.
Here’s a man that not only got elected, I think he’s doing a really good job.
Now, the sad part is that he can’t just do a good job. He’s got to do a great job. Because if he does a good job, that’s not good enough for this country. That’s how bad the country has become.
KING: Do you assess him as a champion?
TRUMP: Oh, yes, he’s a champion. I mean, he won against all odds. If you would have looked — when he first announced, people were giving him virtually no chance. And he’s just done something that’s amazing.
"Principled" Con shakes hands with the smarm. Congrats, boys.
Yesterday, Cruz announced Rubio would make a better President than Donald Trump.
Don’t really fault Trump for that. That was early 2009 before many knew the truth about Obama and were blinded to what an awful ‘leader’ he’d later turn out to be.
Whereas praising Rubio now—after Cruz has known for years that Rubio is a traitorous empty shell of a moron—is a wholly different story.
Amazing, you are able to cherry pick from one side of the story! Nobody can accuse you of not being fair and balanced. Hahahahahah. Your credibility is in the toilet. You have plenty of company.
I know you’re desperate, but Trump supporters are still going to vote for him, just like you’re going to vote for Cruz.
This has done nothing to dissuade those of us who support Trump, just like Cruz: 1) working with Paul Ryan to pass TPA; 2) voting for the Corker Iran Bill; 3) supporting an increase in H1B Visas; 4) joining Glenn Beck to pass out teddy bears and soccer balls at the Southern Border to ILLEGALS; 5) sending out those disgraceful mailers in Iowa; 6) lying about Carson leaving the GOP primary, have not dissuaded you and others in your support for Cruz.
Keep plugging away, but we’re still voting for Trump. :-D
A Trump presidency would make it three narcissists in the last four.
And the other two worked out so very well...
Whereas praising Rubio now—after Cruz has known for years that Rubio is a traitorous empty shell of a moron—is a wholly different story.
Trump's most specific praise is for Obama succeeding against all odds. He also warned that Obama couldn't do a good job, he had to do a great job. Thinking back to Obama's first months in office, everyone was attempting to support and encourage him for obvious reasons.
Remember that meeting W had in the WH with conservative media and other types - asking them, for the sake of national security, to give the inexperienced pres a while to get acclimated before they started attacking him?
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