Trump and Obama's College Transcripts

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

First off, my deepest and sincerest apologies for bringing this nonsense up again. :smiley:

In this clip, Donald Trump says, “You know, Obama spent over 4 million dollars in legal fees to keep these things quiet…”, referring to Obama’s college records, college applications, and passport records. As far as I know, you can’t just waltz in and demand such information from government agencies or college admission offices and expect to get it, thus there would be no need to spend money on lawyers trying to keep it private. Am I wrong? And is there evidence that Obama has spent such money? And most important, is there a bigger “maroon” on earth than Donald Trump?

#2

A student, or former student, certainly can demand copies of his college transcripts. It’s not like Harvard, Columbia, or Occidental College would refuse to give those to Obama if he requested them and paid whatever administrative fee the school requires. Not sure about applications.

They would not, could not, release those records to anyone else without Obama’s consent. Seems reasonable to me. I wouldn’t want random reporters, businesses, or nosy neighbors being able to order such information on me without my consent.

See FERPA

So it makes no sense that Obama would have spent any significant amount of money to hide his college records. A simple letter and a first class stamp would be more than enough to inform his colleges that he exerts his rights under FERPA (which is the default stance anyway) and not to release any records without his consent.

#3

And as long as Trump is demanding birth certificates and college transcripts, maybe it is time he also demanded some IRS forms from the past 12 years from his buddy, Mitt?

Come on now - full disclosure for everyone, Donald…play fair.

#4

Not to mention that some info that the folks demanding the transcripts want to see (attendance, for example) wouldn’t BE in said transcripts.

#5

Well, actually, in the clip I linked to Trump says “if Obama opened up his records maybe Mitt should give his returns and that would be a great trade. I guarantee it would be a really wonderful trade.” The “records” he is referring to here are the ones I mentioned in the OP.

#6

To be fair, if someone DID have a catastrophically embarrassing secret in their college records, relying on normal privacy may not be enough, they may have to proactively combat people trying to get it illegally.

However, based on not much but you’re link, I will assume that Trump is completely lying, and Obama hasn’t done anything particular to hide it other than not deliberately release it. (He’s done some bad things, but I don’t see any particular reason to think he’s gone to particular lengths to hide anything specific here.)

#7

For the sake of humanity, I wish that thing on Trump’s head would hurry up and finish eating him.

#8

I think where this is heading is that Obama attended college as a foreign exchange student.

#9

I wanna see Mitt’s birth certificate. I mean, comon, do any of us really know that Mitt Romney was born in the US? Did any of us see it?! He could be like, Russian, or French, for all we know!

#10

Dying of laughter over the above!

I don’t know what we’re looking for in those college transcripts now … the man’s only been POTUS for 3.5 years.

#11

I heard he was born on a polygamist compound in Mexico, actually.

#12

I think where the legal expenses might be coming from is that nutcases all over the country are filing lawsuits where they issue subpoenas for (among other things) Obama’s records or are filing lawsuits trying to get a court to order the release of these records. Obama (or the local Democratic party if they are, for example, trying to get Obama kicked off the ballot) then has to pay a lawyer to appear in court and have the lawsuits thrown out or the subpoenas quashed.

#13

Extra-curriculars go a long way toward a really *decent *career.

#14

Yes, the origin of this is an April Fool’s joke/hoax from 2009.

#15

“Hm…A+ in English Composition…B+ in Physics…A in History of Western Civlization…A+ in Document Forging…Oooh, a C- in Calculus…A+ in Seminar: Marxist Analysis of Resistance to Colonialist Oppression…A- in Colloquium on 17th Century English Metaphysical Poets…A+ in Advanced Seminar on Foreign Infiltration of American Society…aaand a B+ in Sociology. Yeah, nothing really to see here.”

#16

I dunno, do we really want a guy who only barely passed Calculus to be in charge of the economy?

#17

No way. Did you hear that accent?

#18

It really keeps working, no?

Dem partisans demand Mitt’s tax info.
Rep partisan Trump spindoctors this into “we will only give those if you give us Obama’s college transcripts”.

Trump wins because:

  1. he suggests there is somethign shady about Obama’s college transcripts
  2. he draws the focus away from Romney’s tax info;
  3. he suggests both sides start even, forgetting that the claim for Romneys tax info was a retaliation for the birthers demanding to see Obama’s perfectly valid birth certificate;
  4. He suggests Trump himself isn’t rich or powerful enough to demand Obama’s college transcripts if he really wanted to do so, thus making Trump an ordinary American up against the Big Governement;
  5. He reminds everyone that Obama is an elitist because he went to college and Jo the Plumber didn’t;