Former Wharton Admissions Official Reveals Trump Is in Fact NOT a Super Genius

You’re going to want to be sitting down for this one: President Donald Trump may not be a “super genius” after all.

On Monday, the Washington Post published an interview with James Nolan, an 81 year old former admissions officer at the University of Pennsylvania who played a role in ferrying Trump from Fordham University to Wharton, Penn’s acclaimed business school. Nolan was a longtime friend of Fred Trump Jr., Donald’s older brother, and in 1966, when Donald wanted to make the move out of Fordham, Nolan, who was then working in the admissions office, said Fred called him up to beg the now-president’s way into the school.

Since then, three of Trump’s children have followed in his footsteps—Donald Jr. and Ivanka went to Wharton and Tiffany went to Penn for undergraduate. For his part, Trump has bragged that his degree from the school is “like super genius staff” and that it’s “the hardest school to get in.”

The Post reports that in the mid-1960s, the acceptance rate for transfer students was around 40 percent, when it’s now just 7.4 percent. But Nolan made clear that during his sit-down with Trump, it was clear he wasn’t dealing with a particularly smart individual.

“It was not very difficult,” Nolan told the Post. “I certainly was not struck by any sense that I’m sitting before a genius. Certainly not a super genius.”

The Post’s story doesn’t really provide a bounty of fresh or interesting information outside of the quotes from the 81-year-old former Ivy League admissions director; it also whispers nicely what should be shouted belligerently: that the man in charge of leading one of the major political parties and running the country is a one percent asshole who has been handed each and every advantage in life and still managed to make a mess out of everything. (If you’re looking for more on how Penn officials seem to kind of hate the fact that Trump name-drops them constantly, check out this 2016 piece from the Associated Press.)

But given this is the same man who goes around constantly dropping lines like, “I’m not a stupid person,” it does feel like some shoe-leather reporting was necessary. So, there you have it. Donald Trump: not that smart!