Mary L. Trump’s scathing new memoir about her uncle, Donald Trump, landed in the hands of a number of reporters Tuesday, and they have been poring through pages that describe a dark, dysfunctional family that reared a sociopathic real estate mogul whose turn as president now “threatens the world’s health, economic security and social fabric.”
Among the claims made by Mary Trump in her book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” is an allegation Trump cheated on the SAT college entrance exam to get into a prestigious college.
Donald Trump grew up seeing people in “monetary terms” Mary Trump wrote, and learned to bully others and practice “cheating as a way of life,” according to excerpts of the book appearing in the New York Times and Business Insider.
According to Mary Trump’s book, as a high school student in Queens, the future president paid someone to take the SAT on his behalf. The high score the proxy earned helped Trump gain admittance to the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Wharton business school.
Trump received his bachelor’s degree in 1968, and has often boasted about attending Wharton, which he has referred to as “the best school in the world” and “super genius stuff,” the New York Times said.
The Business Insider noted that the Wharton School established a policy last year that “providing false information on an application for admission, cheating on an examination, and tampering with records” are qualifying offenses to revoke alumni degrees.
Sadly, wealthy people trying to cheat their children’s way into top universities has become all too familiar to Americans in the wake of the more recent college admissions scandal. News broke in March 2019 that dozens of wealthy parents, including TV actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, and a number of Bay Area parents, paid bribes to a corrupt college admissions consultant to get their children fraudulently admitted to top U.S. colleges.
Former “Full House” actress Loughlin and her fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, pleaded guilty in May to charges of paying $500,000 to get their two daughters, Olivia Jade and Isabella, fraudulently admitted to the University of Southern California. Consultant William “Rick” Singer and alleged accomplices at USC created fake athletic profiles for Olivia Jade and Isabella that falsely portrayed them as crew team recruits.
Loughlin and Giannulli, who reportedly is an avid Trump supporter, are expected to be sentenced Aug. 21 in U.S. District Court in Boston, Massachusetts. Prosecutors have recommended that Loughlin receive a two-month prison term and Giannulli be sentenced to five months.
“Desperate Housewives” actress Huffman paid Singer $15,000 to have her daughter’s SAT score illegally boosted. Huffman pleaded guilty shortly after being charged in the scandal and served 11 days in the federal prison in Dublin.
Mary Trump’s book is scheduled to be published July 14. She has long been estranged from her uncle and is the first member of the Trump family to break ranks with her relatives and share family secrets.
Her allegations that her uncle cheated on his SATs prompted a number of people to remark on Twitter how Trump was fixated on President Barack Obama’s academic record. Trump often challenged Obama to release his school records, but Obama supporters noted that Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, and instead they challenged Trump to release his records.
For years, Trump attacked Obama's academic record
In 2011, Trump said: "I heard he was a terrible student. I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records."
In fact, Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School
Now, let's see Trump's transcripts. #SATs https://t.co/XYErEYvIvJ
— Chris Lu (@ChrisLu44) July 7, 2020
Mary Trump is the daughter of Trump’s oldest brother, Fred Trump Jr., who was expected to take over the family real estate business from patriarch Fred Trump Sr. After a miserable time working for his father, Fred Trump Jr. left the family business to become a professional pilot for Trans World Airlines before returning to the fold.
Fred Trump Jr. suffered from alcoholism and died from an alcohol-induced heart attack at age 42 in 1981. Mary Trump said Fred Trump Sr. was abusive to both Fred Jr. and Donald, and alleges that the president was indifferent to her father’s suffering.
Donald Trump has often talked about how his brother’s departure from the family business gave him room to succeed, the New York Times reported. “For me, it worked very well,” Trump told the New York Times during his presidential campaign.
Mary Trump wrote that the night her father went to the hospital for his heart attack, he was all alone. Instead of going to the hospital, her uncle, Donald Trump, went to the movies.