The Donald Fantasies

UPDATE:  "It is 'The Next Best Thing' to being Donald Trump’s 'apprentice,' the Trump University ads promised, drawing on what was then the runaway popularity of Trump’s television show, The Apprentice. Mentors would be 'handpicked by me,' Trump promised in a promotional video; and, his other promotional materials promised, they would teach students Trump’s 'secrets,' then guide them through get-rich-quick real estate deals and even find them lenders so that their deals could be financed with 'other people’s money.'

The court documents tell a different story. Michael Sexton, who was hired by Trump to be president of Trump University, testified in a 2012 pretrial deposition that 'none of our instructors … were handpicked by Donald Trump' and that the curriculum was written by an outside adult-education firm.

The record is replete with evidence that many of the supposed 'expert' teachers and mentors–who were mostly paid only sales commissions–had backgrounds in sales rather than experience in real estate investing, let alone successful investing. Two had filed for personal bankruptcy during the time they were mentoring.

Trump has testified in a deposition (after promising to sue the lawyers suing him) that he had no direct role in creating the curriculum or hiring the teachers. He did not know, he said, if his 'university' conferred degrees. (It didn’t.) And he could not explain what the sales materials were referring to when they touted Trump’s 'foreclosure system' for flipping distressed properties.

So far, Trump’s only courtroom defense beyond the procedural wrangling has been that these kinds of apparent misrepresentations are the kind of general puffery involved in any commercial marketing. A case his lawyers have cited is one in which Allstate insurance successfully defended its slogan 'You’re in good hands with Allstate.'"

Read Time, What the Legal Battle Over Trump University Reveals About Its Founder, which lists the many lies told in the effort to separate the suckers from their money.

Trump has even bragged about how he plays "to people’s fantasies."

"He’s the biggest phony in the world, yet people as gullible as me think he’s the greatest guy in the world," [says "Bob Guillo [who] put $34,995 on his American Express card to pay for the Trump Gold Elite package. He said he walked away with little more than meaningless certificates of completion and a photograph of himself with a life-size image of The Donald."]

Read the Washington Post, Donald Trump billed his 'University' as a road to riches, but critics call it a fraud.

Again I ask, why are Republi-cons such suckers for snake oil salesmen?