Trump Shows Love by Lying About Tiffany’s Law-School Grades

Tiffany Trump with her husband, Michael Boulos, at the Republican National Convention. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Tiffany Trump is often portrayed as the forgotten Trump child, but recently she’s gotten some surprising public attention from her father. Unfortunately, we’re talking about Donald Trump here, so this Tiffany praise has ranged from kind of weird to totally made up.

First, during a campaign speech on October 10, Donald announced that Tiffany is pregnant . He seemed to spontaneously drop the news after spotting Dr. Massad Boulos, the father of Tiffany’s husband, Michael Boulos, in the crowd.

“He happens to be the father of Tiffany’s husband, Michael, who’s a very exceptional young guy,” Trump said. “And she’s an exceptional young woman. And she’s going to have a baby. So that’s nice.”

Indeed, that is “nice” news for the family. But did Tiffany want to reveal it herself with a cute social-media post? Perhaps! The Detroit Economic Club isn’t a popular venue for pregnancy announcements.

This week, Trump expounded on why Tiffany is an “exceptional” woman, bragging about how well she performed in law school at a campaign rally in Concord, North Carolina. “She was a great student, and she went to a fantastic law school, graduated No. 1 in her class,” Trump said on Monday night.

Finishing first in your class at Georgetown University Law Center is pretty impressive! Too bad Tiffany definitely didn’t do that. NBC News reports that Georgetown doesn’t rank its students, nor was Tiffany an honors graduate:

Tiffany Trump is not on a list of honors graduates for the 2020 class published on the school’s website. The Georgetown University Law Center also indicated on its website that it does not rank students.

It remains unclear if Tiffany is doing anything with her law degree. As Above the Law notes, “It is unknown whether she ever took the bar exam, and it unknown whether she ever secured a job within the legal profession.”

Nevertheless, Tiffany earning her J.D. is still commendable — so why is her father turning this into an embarrassing story by inflating her academic accomplishments? It’s probably just in his nature. Donald Trump actually told the exact same lie about himself.

A 1973 New York Times article said Trump graduated “first in his class” from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and that claim was repeated in a 1976 Times profile of Trump. But as the Washington Post reported in 2019, it’s actually not true by a long shot:

In fact, Trump’s name was not among the top honorees at his commencement. Nor was he on the dean’s list his senior year, meaning he was not among the top 56 students in his graduating class of 366.

All that is known for certain is that Trump received at least a 2.0 average, or C, enabling him to graduate. A 4.0 is equivalent to an A. 

Penn officials said they are prohibited from releasing Trump’s grades unless he allows it.

Unsurprisingly, Trump has not allowed Penn to released his grades. But he did admit to exaggerating his academic record in a 1988 New York Magazine profile by Julie Baumgold. The piece says:

No baloney. No legal obfuscating like Donald gets all day in his business with the guys who try to talk mush-mouthed around things as though Donald wasn’t first in his class at Wharton. (Okay, maybe not “first,” as myth has it, but he had the “highest grades possible.”)

So by lying about Tiffany, Donald is suggesting she’s just like him. It may be the highest compliment he’s capable of giving.