Trump University’s live seminars and events were not based on the content of Eldred’s Real Estate Investor Training Program. Instead, Move Dove, who essentially owns that “front-end high pressure speaker scam” world, provided speakers instructors, mentors and salespeaple to Trump University, and these people brought with them their own programs, which turned into Trump University’s programs.
.. 11. While Trump University claimed that its teachers and mentors were all experts in real extate, I believe that most of the instructors, mentors and coaches had very little or no personal experience in the real estate techniques they were teaching, and that Trump University misrepresented their expereiences and successes to the public. I know this because I received complaints from Trump University students about this. For example, David Stamper was a mentor and front end speaker, but his background was in jewelry making and he did not have any personal real estate experience when he was hired by Trump University.
12. From the beginning, Trump University speakers told students to raise their credit card limits so that they could be ready to purchase real estate. In fact, the speakers then told students to use their increased credit limits to purchase the next level of Trump University seminar.
.. 13
.. To my knowledge, not a single customer who paid for a Trump University seminar programs went on to successfully invest in real estate based upon the techniques that were taught.
Trump University: It’s Worse Than You Think
The ad said that Trump had “hand-picked” Trump University’s instructors, and it ended with a quote from him: “I can turn anyone into a successful real estate investor, including you.”
.. In fact, Trump hadn’t handpicked the instructors, and he didn’t attend the three-day seminars. Moreover, the complaint said, “no specific Donald Trump techniques or strategies were taught during the seminars, Donald Trump ‘never’ reviewed any of Trump University’s curricula or programming materials, nor did he review any of the content for the free seminars or the three day seminars.” So what were the attendees taught? According to the complaint, “the contents and material presented by Trump University were developed in large part by a third-party company that creates and develops materials for an array of motivational speakers and Seminar and timeshare rental companies.” The closest that the attendees at the seminars got to Trump was when they were encouraged to have their picture taken with a life-size photo of him.
.. Some of these methods, such as encouraging customers to max out their credit cards and playing psychological tricks on them, are familiar from the world of time-shares and other dodgy industries. “If they can afford the gold elite don’t allow them to think about doing anything besides the gold elite,”
.. On Wednesday, Hillary Clinton offered a preview of what is to come, calling Trump a “fraud” who is “trying to scam America the way he scammed all those people at Trump University.”
.. The Clinton campaign is clearly hoping that Trump University will be to Trump as Bain Capital was to Mitt Romney—a way to portray him as just another selfish rich guy who is out to profit at the expense of ordinary folk.
.. Trump U is devastating because it’s metaphor for his whole campaign: promising hardworking Americans way to get ahead, but all based on lies.”
.. It is also worth recalling that, in Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, another populist businessman, served as Prime Minister four times despite a list of allegations against him that included bribery, tax evasion, sexual misconduct, and having ties to the mafia.
.. If the revelations about Trump University don’t do any damage to Trump, it’s time to worry—or worry even more—about American democracy.
The Art of the Swindle
Predators, by and large, do not attack the strongest prey in the wild. They instead target the vulnerable, the very young, and the very old—the prey that is least able to defend itself.
Trump University, the defunct real-estate education program created by presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, pursued a similar approach, according to its former employees in legal documents unsealed Tuesday.
“Based upon my personal experience and employment, I believe that Trump University was a fraudulent scheme, and that it preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money,” said Ronald Schnackenberg, a sales manager at Trump University in 2006 and 2007.
.. “The Trump University instructors and mentors were a joke. Most of them were not experts in real estate and did not [have] experience in the real estate techniques they were teaching,” Nichols said. “They were unqualified people posing as Donald Trump’s ‘right-hand men.’ They were teaching methods that were unethical, and they had little to no experience flipping properties or doing real estate deals. It was a façade, a total lie.”
.. Corinne Sommer, the former manager of Trump University’s events departments, recalled how instructors in the second-level seminars, which cost roughly $1,500 to attend, would ask customers to call their credit-card companies to triple or quadruple their credit limit and max out their credit cards for real-estate investments.
.. “While Trump University’s advertisements claimed it wanted to help consumers make money in real estate, in fact, based upon my experience, I believe that Trump University was only interested in selling every person the most expensive seminars they could possibly buy on credit,” Sommer testified. “I recall that some consumers had showed up who were homeless and could not afford the seminars, yet I overheard Trump University representatives telling them, ‘it’s ok; just max out your credit card.’”
.. Trump University came to an end five years before Trump’s presidential campaign officially began. But both products rely on a similar three-part strategy. The first part is an emphasis on insecurity.
.. Trump University promised an easy path to wealth and success in the real-estate market just as the housing bubble was about to burst. (“Let’s get you enrolled today so you can start building a real estate empire,” reads one suggested line from the playbook.)
.. “I do not believe that Trump University taught Donald Trump’s investing ‘secrets,’” one former Trump employee testified. “Donald Trump came from a wealthy family and had resources at his disposal to purchase real estate—that is the secret—one the average consumer could not replicate.”
Trump Takes Aim at the Independent Judiciary
It’s unlikely that Trump would strip Americans of the right to elect their leaders. It’s more likely that he’d undermine those institutions that restrain the power of the leaders Americans elect. He’d undermine the institutions that limit presidential power and safeguard individual rights and equality under the law.
.. Trump’s close ally, Roger Stone, has said that, “when Donald Trump is president, he should turn off” CNN’s “FCC license.” Trump has repeatedly calledthe journalists who cover him “scum” and barred news organizations that cover him critically from attending his public events.
.. It’s easy to imagine what will happen to Curiel now. Like the journalists Trump has publicly slammed, he’ll receive an avalanche of personal, bigoted abuse from Trump’s supporters, including, quite possibly, death threats. This may, in and of itself, give future judges second thoughts about incurring The Donald’s wrath.
.. But the more Americans think the courts are rigged, the stronger Trump’s position. The more he convinces his supporters that judges, like reporters, are corrupt and self-interested, the less public legitimacy they enjoy. And the less public legitimacy they enjoy, the less they can check Trump’s power.
.. Where he’s been more consistent is in his willingness to denigrate anyone who gets in his way. He’s less likely to the challenge federal judiciary’s progressivism than to challenge its independence. Gonzalo Curiel may be the first judge he’s threatened on his way to the White House. But he’s unlikely to be the last.