We’ve been over this before, in connection with Justice Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings. NCLR is a lot more like the NAACP than, say, the Nation of Islam or the Klan.
Well, then, we can ask ourselves, why would it be the case that the first four happy campers he pulls out are not so much happy as beholden. This case has been on for awhile, so, sure, I would expect Trump’s lawyers to canvas ex-students to enlist them as testimonials.
So how come they got to come forward with these? With so many thousands of graduates pleased and satisfied, they only had these on hand?
These “reviews” he is referring to are what we in the adult education field call “smile sheets”. These are the end of class surveys passed out at the end of a day of training that basically ask bullshit questions like “did this course meet your expectations?” and etc.
If this is what he is basing his claims of thousands of satisfied students", then that is just weak sauce.
They are called smile sheets because 99% of people put no effort into being truthful or introspective on them. The reality is they spend 45 seconds ticking the highest box, and if they are forced to write something will write “great job”, “really liked the trainer” or the like. If they write anything critical, it will be some variation on these three items:
[ul]
[li]Chairs were uncomfortable[/li][li]Room was too cold/hot[/li][li]Lunch was great/bad/too short.[/li][/ul]
The end of class survey is a “reaction survey”, it measures how people “feel” about what they just sat through. It is the lowest level of evaluation of the effectiveness of a training course. In no way does it measure how effective a training class is. It would be interesting to see if TU has any data on Kirkpatrick levels 2-4.
In other words, the fact that some plaintiffs filled out positive or neutral “smile sheets” in no way shows that they actually gained any positive skill or benefitted from attending, so they do nothing to disprove the plaintiff’s later dissatisfaction.
It also ignores the crux of the case: that the instructors were not, as advertised, hand picked experts in the field of real estate. It doesn’t matter if students were satisfied while they were sitting in class. It doesn’t even matter if they made money investing in real estate.
What matters is that they were willing to pay a substantial fee based on a promise that they were getting instruction from real estate experts personally associated with the Donald. This association is what made the high tuition (presumably) worthwhile. And it was a lie: he had only token involvement, and the instructors were mere salespeople. That is the fraud, regardless of whether or not the people realized it as they sat in the classroom.
I managed to watch a minute and a half of Trump’s speech before my bullshit limit was passed and I had to hit the Mute button. He looked alternately like a rat (shifty eyes when going to the teleprompter) and a perp under interrogation (when looking at the crowd). Never seen anybody blink so much.
“You’ve given me the honor to lead the Republican Party this fall,” Trump said. “I understand the responsibility of carrying the mantle, and I will never, ever let you down.” -D. Trump
Yeah, he is spreading the bullshit just a few hours after he did let them down already.
Congresswoman Renee Ellmers is the only Congressperson so far whom Trump has specifically endorsed, including doing recorded robocalls for her. Because North Carolina has had to redraw their districts because a court ruled the old boundaries were drawn in order to minimize the black vote, Elmers was thrown into a district with another incumbent Congressman. She lost the primary today.
