Big news for Donald Trump on the campaign trail. It has nothing to do with his inexorable march to the Republican nomination. It is about the fraud action New York brought against him concerning his now-defunct Trump University. On Tuesday, a New York judge ruled the case will go to trial, perhaps as early as the fall, clearly creating what could be another major sideshow in his bid for the White House.
We all should have a pretty good idea by now of what a Donald Trump presidency would look like. Or perhaps more pointedly, what it would not — reasoned, broad-minded, consensus-driven, balanced, cogent, rational, open and honest leadership. In his inexplicable rise to Republican front-runner — with all the invective, inanity and invention that have come with it — The Donald has painted an indelible image for us of the man who would be King.
But as clear as this presidential specter has now become, we need look no further than his dubious dealings surrounding Trump University for a real-world foretaste of what our State of the Union would look like with Mr. Trump at the helm. From the college’s inception to the time of its demise — barely a six-year run — Trump’s failed venture into higher education plowed a persistent path of fraud and deception, at least from the vantage point of New York and many of the thousands of students who put their faith and their future in the mighty mogul’s charge.
Almost immediately after it opened its doors in New York in 2004, Trump University found itself caught in the government’s crosshairs for a series of regulatory and commercial missteps. It was an early warning sign that should have put all on notice that a Trump University education was not what it was promised to be. Certainly nothing close to the “Ivy League-quality curriculum,” “better than the best business school” Trump promoted.
First was the challenge by New York to the very name of the school. According to the state, Trump University was not a university at all and could not be called one. Second, New York claimed the non-university did not even have a license to offer training or instruction within the state.
Rather than deal with these failings head-on, Trump simply moved his operations to Delaware. Or so he told New York regulators. In fact, Trump stayed put, stubbornly persisting in his pedagogic pursuits. After additional pressure from New York (and Maryland), Trump rebranded his namesake school as the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative. The school unceremoniously closed its doors not long after.
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Perhaps too little too late, New York ultimately sued Trump and his school on behalf of the thousands of students who according to the state paid tens of millions of dollars for “a hard lesson on bait-and-switch.” As New York sees it, Trump made “false promises to convince people to spend tens of thousands of dollars they couldn’t afford for lessons they never got.” The New York lawsuit now heading for trial largely parallels a private suit brought in California by former students likewise claiming they were duped by Trump’s false promises of top-flight tutelage.
In defending against these actions, Trump appears to be relying on a common strategy. The same one he seems to fall back on whenever the going gets tough in his business dealings or more recently, on the campaign trail. That is, go after the accusers. Against New York, that means bringing a hundred-million dollar countersuit for malicious prosecution against New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, with a formal ethics complaint to boot. It also means a sweeping vilification of the highly respected state enforcer who dared take Trump on — “This guy is bad news. He’s disliked by practically everybody. I’m just shocked he continues to hold office. He is a total lowlife, a sleazebag,” Trump said.
Trump has pursued a similar path in California. Following his failed bid to dismiss the former students’ complaint, Trump sued the lead plaintiff for defamation. The court not only dismissed Trump’s suit, it ordered him to pay nearly $800,000 in opposing counsel fees for filing what could only be considered a frivolous action. Trump also went after the plaintiffs’ law firm threatening suit “for as much as we can possibly do.”
Even the presiding California judge has not been off-limits to Trump’s vitriol and grumblings of foul play. In lambasting the judge’s refusal to dismiss the former students’ case, Trump argued it was all about “a hostility toward me by the judge, tremendous hostility, beyond belief — I believe he happens to be Spanish, which is fine, he’s Hispanic, which is fine, and we haven’t asked for a recusal, which we may do, but we have a judge who’s very hostile.”
And so we have it. Not by speculation or supposition. Or any need to closely parse through his many commercial exploits. Trump’s fleeting foray into academia — for which the Better Business Bureau ultimately gave him a D- rating — gives us all the schooling we need to understand the row he would hoe as president. Brash pronouncements. Shady practices. Promises not kept. Steely belligerence. Not the most promising recipe for making America great again.
And to those who remain resolute in their support for Trump’s White House run, perhaps a bit of insight from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is in order. In blunting Trump’s reliance on supposedly favorable student reviews, the court pointed to the recent Ponzi-scheme scandals of Bernie Madoff and the like, astutely observing: “Victims of con artists often sing the praises of their victimizers until the moment they realize they have been fleeced.”
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