Political Irony

In a presidential debate a year ago, when taunted about the Trump University fraud case, Trump flatly stated “I don’t settle cases. I don’t do it because that’s why I don’t get sued very often, because I don’t settle, unlike a lot of other people. You know what, let’s see what happens in court.”

Of course, we knew that was a lie. Trump had settled lawsuits more than a dozen times.

Indeed, in the same debate Trump also claimed that Trump University (even the name was a lie) had a “Ninety-eight percent approval rating” from its students and received “an ‘A’ from the Better Business Bureau”. But debate moderator Megyn Kelly responded that Trump U had a D-minus rating. After a commercial break, Trump waved a piece of paper and claiming “The Better Business Bureau just sent it” and “This just came in, we just got it.” But the Better Business Bureau said they never sent anything. And why would they have? Trump U was out of business and so their official rating is “No rating”. But the BBB added that “Trump University has never been a BBB Accredited Business.”

As for the “98% approval rating” the BBB said “During the period when Trump University appeared to be active in the marketplace, BBB received multiple customer complaints about this business. These complaints affected the Trump University BBB rating, which was as low as D- in 2010.”

And I haven’t even mentioned Trump attacking the judge in the case because he was a Mexican (even though he was born to Americans in Indiana). Or the many other lies he told about this case.

Well, the punchline of this sick joke is that Trump just settled the case, for $25 million. Students will get back around 90 cents for each dollar they spent on the bogus courses at Trump U. That is an unusually generous settlement, designed to make sure it would be accepted so the case would never get to court. Because it was pretty obvious that Trump would have lost.

In the end, it is us who have to settle for a less-than-honest president. And a loser and conman.