Here’s an odd thing: You never hear Donald Trump talking about UFOs. Or Bigfoot. And while imaginative observers may have found Donald Trump's face on Mars, Trump himself seems to be missing from the list of those who doubt the moon landings. Granted, Trump does believe that climate change is a “hoax,” but a lot of what Donald Trump believes seems to fit a theme.
Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories are filled with racism and projection.
“Look,” he told Sean Hannity, “he was born ‘Barry Soetero.’ Somewhere along the line, he changed his name. I heard he had terrible marks, and he ends up in Harvard. He wrote a book that was better than Ernest Hemingway, but his second book was written by an average person. ... I say Bill Ayers wrote the book.”
… “He was best friends with Bill Ayers,” he explained, and Hannity just let him roll on at that point. “Bill Ayers was a super-genius. And a lot of people have said he wrote the book. Well recently, as you know last week, Bill Ayers came out and said he did write the book. Barack Obama wouldn’t be president ― and, you know, I wrote many best-sellers, and also, No. 1 best-sellers, including The Art of the Deal. So I know something about writing. And I want to tell you, the guy that wrote the first book didn’t write the second book.”
Those two paragraphs are so rich in “Trump theory” that they could be the subject of their own book.
1) Trump believes that President Obama’s moving memoir of how his life was affected by his absent father was actually written by a “super-genius” white man.
2) Trump believes that Barack Obama “was born ‘Barry Soetero’” and either spent much of his life using a false name, or is using a false name now.
3) Trump believes that Obama had “terrible marks” in college but somehow made it into Harvard.
There’s a deep racist theme running through all these ideas. But there’s also one person who actually fits most of these conspiracy theories … and his name is Donald Trump.
When it comes to President Obama, Donald Trump’s suggestions are ludicrous.
Both the president’s short and long form birth certificates show that he was born Barack Obama. He was not “born ‘Barry Soetero’” and the idea that the president called himself by that name in college is a hoax.
Just how terrible were Barack Obama’s grades? So terrible that he was president of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude. That’s how terrible. President Obama’s fellow students universally remember him and have nothing but praise for both his attitude and his performance.
And Bill Ayers? While the right was hot-to-trot on President Obama’s connection to a 60s radical, Trump was just repeating Palin’s pallin’.
Palin cited an article in Saturday's New York Times about Obama's relationship with Ayers, now 63. But that article concluded that "the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called 'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.' "
Not exactly “best friends.”
But what about the flip side of all these accusations? What about Donald Trump?
Trump’s “No. 1 best-seller … The Art of the Deal” was actually written by Tony Schwartz, right down to picking the title of the book. Trump contributed nothing but headaches.
Since Schwartz revealed that he was actually the man who wrote the book while Donald could not focus long enough to even produce a good quote, Schwartz has also been on the receiving end of Trump’s projector.
On the subject of college, while President Obama was taking leadership positions and collecting honors, that’s not how it went for Trump. Donnie only got into Wharton ...
… on a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer. The officer had known Trump’s older brother, Freddy.
And far from being a leader in college, his classmates can’t even remember Trump being around.
In a manner hardly consistent with his outsized personality, college-aged Donald Trump was barely seen around campus on weekends, remained uninvolved in most campus activities and his picture was even absent from the yearbook. While there’s no lack of Trump hotels, casinos and golf courses, no building on Penn’s campus bears his name.
Donald Trump didn’t graduate with honors, wasn’t president of any school organization, was barely there. We can’t know for sure that he got “terrible marks” because he’s never released any of his grades, though he has lied about them frequently, saying that he graduated at the top of his class.
Who really needed someone else to write a book for him? Donald Trump.
Who really got into school only with a helping hand? Donald Trump.
Who really underperformed in college? Donald Trump.
But what about the name? Why is Donald Trump so obsessed with the idea that Barack Obama isn’t who he says he is? Maybe the answer is in interviews with Trump’s classmates at Wharton.
“Four years — including lots of required classes — is a long time never to hear of a classmate, especially with such a distinctive name,” wrote 1968 Wharton graduate Larry Krohn, another one of Trump’s classmates, in an email.
No picture in the school yearbook. No activities. No honors. No … anything.
Most students can’t even recall Trump being around. Except …
Of the 13 classmates who spoke with the Daily Pennsylvanian, only one remembers seeing Trump at all on campus. That student, 1968 Wharton graduate Ted Sachs, remembered a far different Trump than “The Donald” of today.
“I liked him. I thought he was a really nice low-key guy,” Sachs said. “He was very self effacing — he never talked about himself.”
One person remembers meeting someone who called himself Donald Trump, and that Trump was “far different” from the Donald Trump we all know today.
So … was it Donald Trump at all?
Someone else played Donald Trump when it came to writing his biography. Did someone else fill the role while “Trump” was at Wharton?
... in a 1985 biography of Trump, Jerome Tuccille wrote that he was not an honor student and “spent a lot of time on outside business activities.”
Maybe that wasn’t “a lot of time”—maybe it was “all the time.” Maybe the reason only one person remembers a “very different” Donald Trump being at Wharton was because the real Donald Trump was never there at all. Maybe it was someone hired to take his place.
After all, Trump is known to have pretended to be someone else.
During the 1980s, Donald Trump was known to return reporters' phone calls posing as a fictional spokesman for the Trump organization. The name Trump assumed varied slightly — "John Miller," John Barron," and "John Baron" — but the goal didn't: Tout Trump as a hyper-cool, brilliant playboy.
Donald Trump seems to spend a lot of his time projecting his own sins and flaws onto others, while thinking of himself as perfect and beyond compare. Let’s hope he’s not doing the same thing with the rapist and murderer comments.