Real estate magnate and reality television star Donald Trump, a potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate, tells Breitbart News it’s a “double standard” for the Washington Post to spend as much time and effort as it did investigating Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s college days, when reporters haven’t put much effort into investigating President Barack Obama’s background.
“Why didn’t they send a reporter over to Occidental and to Columbia and to the various Obama schools?” Trump said in a phone interview. “There’s never been a reporter over there. Nobody’s ever found anything. There’s no records available. Why didn’t send a reporter over to talk to the people from the schools he went to? It seems like a terrible double standard.”
When asked about how, six years deep now into the Obama administration, the president has been able to keep his college transcripts and records hidden from the American people, Trump said it’s largely because Obama spent millions in legal fees aiming to keep them hidden.
“They have nothing. They have nothing,” Trump said. “They don’t even have any records at all. They have no record of names. They have no record he went there. And of course the president spent $3.2 million to make sure they don’t have any records.”
In a story before the 2012 election, the Washington Times’ Dave Boyer wrote that, “most presidents’ academic records are made public by the time they reach the highest office in the land, either with their consent or by someone else digging them up.”
“There’s no reason why people shouldn’t know,” Stephen Hess, a senior fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution, told the Times then, imploring Obama to be transparent. “At this point, it’s pretty moot — perhaps amusing if it turned out that he didn’t do very well.”
Boyer wrote that, “whenever Team Obama is asked about the president’s college performance, officials dodge the question, obviously with Mr. Obama’s blessing.”
Specifically, the way Obama dodges the questions, Boyer added, is an orchestrated process.
“The White House press office refers such questions to campaign officials, who in turn refuse to provide any information,” Boyer wrote. “The Obama campaign didn’t respond to questions for this article.”
Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly has also called on the president to publicly release his college records.
“President Obama himself has a very compelling story to tell,” O’Reilly said on the O’Reilly Factor in early 2013.
His father abandoned him. He was raised primarily by his maternal grandparents in Hawaii. He had few resources. Yet, Barack Obama rose up to become the most powerful man in the world, a stunning achievement. How much the system helped Mr. Obama is unknown as his college records have been kept private. We don’t know the extent of affirmative action. We don’t know how much the government subsidized his climb to the top. It would be very helpful to have that information simply to be fair to the president and his vision. There’s no question President Obama believes his success is partly due to government. That goes to his famous line: “You didn’t build that.”
At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2013, 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin remarked about Obama’s hidden background as well—in a joke about gun control efforts via more “background checks” for gun purchasers.
“Background checks?” Palin said on the stage. “Yeah, I guess to learn more about a person’s thinking and associations and intentions. More background checks? Dandy idea, Mr. President — should have started with yours.”
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