The Times is also excellent to look at Trump’s for-profit education empire. He’s also lent his brand to that scandal-ridden industry, dangling the false promise of wealth in front of consumers.
This, on how Trump tries to use high evaluation percentages as a defense against consumer complaints, is amazing:
Students said the evaluations must be put into context: they were told to fill them out using their names, often in the presence of the instructors they were assessing. Mr. Tufenkian, for example, said he gave high marks to the program after his mentor told him he would not leave until Mr. Tufenkian did so. “I had to fill it out right in front of him,” Mr. Tufenkian said.
The school has repeatedly sought to use such evaluations to raise questions about the credibility of unhappy former students. After Tarla Makaeff, who spent about $37,000 on Trump classes, joined the lawsuit against the school, the company released raw footage of a Trump University videographer approaching her in a hotel conference room, asking her to assess the program and her mentors. On the video, her mentors can be seen standing beside her, clearly within earshot. While warning that “we just got started,” Ms. Makaeff, 37, calls the mentors “great” and “awesome.”
The Times also reports that some former students allege that Trump University “promised intensive one-on-one instruction that often failed to materialize. And its mentors recommended investments from which they stood to profit.” Trump was forced by the states to change the name of the “school” because it misled people. Meantime, Texas is investigating its practices, and Trump has shut it down temporarily.
I’ll leave the kicker to Edward Ericson Jr., who left this comment on my LAT Trump post:
What no one has done yet, though, is examine how & why Trump has any credibility with anyone, anywhere. The way the dude presents, everything about him that is not sleazy is fraudulent. So why, after 30 years of this, is his name of any value?
ADDING:
Henry Blodget pulls a fun clip (with a bogus headline, naturally) of Trump raging against the Times and Barbaro this morning on CNBC:
Good for whoever the Simon guy was on CNBC for pushing back hard against Trump. UPDATE: Looking at the TVEyes rush transcripts it looks like it was Simon Hobbs, bringing a welcome bit of British interviewing style to American TV.
I have a hard time finding any sympathy for someone idiotic enough to spend $37,000 on something called Trump University, and even less for anyone who invested serious money in any real estate venture with the name Trump associated with it. I get that it *might* be litigable on the basis of deceptive advertising, but Trump has been an outright fraud since the 1980's, for all the reasons you mentioned. If these people didn't know, they should have known. One can't help thinking that stupidity of that magnitude should prove to be costly.
#1 Posted by James, CJR on Fri 13 May 2011 at 01:53 PM