Celebrity rich dude Donald Trump has been teasing a "big announcement" about President Barack Obama for a few days. It turns out the announcement was actually about Donald Trump.
If Obama releases his college and passport applications and records by 5 PM on October 31, Trump has pledged to give $5 Million to the charity of the President's choosing.
While on the surface, this seems like self-promoting grandstanding from a wealthy Republican who has made no secret of his animosity towards the President, there is a clever aspect to all this.
With less than two weeks to the US election, Obama's response could be a major factor. If Obama declines the offer, the question will be 'what is he hiding?' As Forbes contributor Rick Ungar noted, even if Obama releases the documents, sceptics will, as with his long-form birth certificate, challenge their authenticity.
Whether this has any affect on the election is hard to say, but it is doing what Trump intended, which is to put the attention-seeking developer into the limelight.
5 comments:
I think Obama should offer to release these records once Romney releases all of his tax records.
Mitt Romney has not showed his college transcripts and passport records either. Yet there is no Trump offer of $5 million to charity if Romney releases them. How unfair. Trump apparently likes Romney, and yet he does not seem eager to give $5 million to charity for Romney releasing transcripts and passport records.
If Trump made the offer to both candidates, then it might be considered a fair offer of $10 million to charity. But he didn't.
Moreover it seems to show that Trump has suspicions about Obama not being a good student, while he has no suspicions about Romney not being a good student. I wonder why that could be???
BTW, the allegation that Obama was a foreign exchange student came from an April Fool's article originally written on April 1, 2009.
Trump isn't pretending to be bi-partisan about this but there's nothing to stop a rich Democrat from making a similar offer to Romney.
Re: "there's nothing to stop a rich Democrat from making a similar offer to Romney."
Unless and until that happens, and IF Romney accepts the offer and releases his grades and passport records, then Obama should accept Trump's offer and do the same thing.
BUT until that happens, Obama should treat the offer as a ploy by an enemy, an enemy who should not be honored by taking the deal.
And, get this, if Obama took the deal and released all that data, then Trump could say "I would have given that money to charity anyway. See how I tricked him."
And, by not taking the deal, Obama leaves the matter the way that it is, that a partisan nut who supports his rival asks for the grades of the first black president of the USA, who just happens to have graduated from Harvard Law School Magna Cum Laude, and not for the grades of the white candidate who is running against him.
Obama, who did not take Trump's offer (but then Romney never revealed his transcripts or passport records either) was re-elected President of the United States on November 6. He received more than a majority of the popular vote---more than two million votes more than Mitt Romney---and a significant majority of the Electoral College votes.
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