Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (June 2, 2016)
NATION Thursday, June 2, 2016 East Oregonian Page 7A Trump University: Sales strategy foreshadowed campaign WASHINGTON (AP) — Grand promises. Boundless boasts. Abso- lute faith in the man behind it all. The strategies that Donald Trump’s now-defunct educational company used to woo customers have plenty of echoes of the presumptive Republican nominee’s current pitch to voters, based on newly disclosed court documents about Trump University. Hillary Clinton leapt on the parallels Wednesday, using them to cast Trump as a “fraud” who peddles false promises to Americans but cares only about his personal gain. BRIEFLY Oficers swarm UCLA in massive response to murder-suicide LOS ANGELES (AP) — A murder-suicide at a UCLA engineering building Wednesday drew hundreds of heavily armed oficers who swarmed the sprawling Los Angeles campus, where students close to summer break barricaded themselves in classrooms as best they could before being evacuated with their hands up. About two hours after the irst 911 call came in around 10 a.m., with the center of campus still saturated with oficers, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck declared the threat over. Two men were dead in an ofice, and authorities found a gun and what might be a suicide note, he said. The response to the shooting was overwhelming: Teams of oficers in helmets and bulletproof vests who were looking for victims and suspects ran across the normally tranquil campus tucked in the city’s bustling west side. Some with high-powered riles yelled for bystanders to evacuate. Groups of oficers stormed into buildings that had been locked down and cleared hallways as police helicopters hovered overhead. ‘Myth-busting’ Obama tries to debunk GOP on the economy ELKHART, Ind. (AP) — President Barack Obama went on a “myth-busting” mission Wednesday aimed at undermining Republican arguments about the economy, working to give cover to Democrats to embrace his policies ahead of the presidential election. Oficially, Obama came to this hardscrabble town in northern Indiana to illustrate how steps he took in the irst days of his presidency had ultimately paid off and pulled the economy back from the brink. Yet his rally at a high school in Elkhart blurred the lines between governing and campaigning, marking the president’s most aggressive and direct foray to date into the roaring campaign to replace him. “The primary story that Republicans have been telling about the economy is not supported by the facts. It’s just not,” Obama said. “They repeat it a lot, but it’s not supported by the facts. But they say it anyway. Now what is that? It’s because it has worked to get them votes.” When Obama came to Elkhart seven years ago on his irst major presidential trip, the unemployment rate was soaring and the White House struggling to secure support for injecting hundreds of billions of federal dollars into the economy. Though the economy has improved measurably, Republicans have been reluctant to give Obama credit. So with all the vigor he displayed on the campaign trail years ago, Obama attempted a nearly line-by- line takedown of claims Republicans have made about his policies holding the economy back. He dismissed those GOP voices as “anti-government, anti- immigrant, anti-trade and let’s face it, anti-change.” “My bigger point is to bust this myth of crazy, liberal government spending,” Obama said. “He is trying to scam America the way he scammed all those people at Trump U,” Clinton said during a campaign stop in Newark, New Jersey. “It’s important that we recognize what he has done because that’s usually a pretty good indicator of what he will do.” The new details about Trump University were revealed in docu- ments released Tuesday as part of a trio of lawsuits accusing the businessman of leecing students with unfulilled promises to provide secrets of real estate success. Plain- tiffs contend the organization gave seminars and classes across the country that constantly pressured customers to buy more and more but failed to deliver on promises of inancial success. Trump vigorously maintains that customers were overwhelmingly pleased with the offerings, and the documents do include testimony from several satisied customers. His campaign released a video Wednesday featuring several people speaking positively about their experiences — although two of the former students shown have busi- ness ties to Trump. A case against Trump University in San Diego is scheduled to go to trial shortly after the November presidential election. The documents released ahead of the trial underscore that, like the businessman’s presidential campaign, the selling point of Trump University was its namesake’s unshakeable self-conidence and his own personal success story. The program’s 2009 playbook boasts that Trump is “the most celebrated entrepreneur on earth. He makes more money in a day than most people do in a lifetime.” Another manual boasts, “The Trump University Team is truly the best of the best, however Retreat & Special Events Team Members are the crème de la crème of the best of the best.” The playbooks, which are guides for those running the Trump University seminars, are chock- full of advice on how to seal the deal with prospective students, including painstakingly speciic instructions on seminar room setups and music selections, reminiscent of the attention to detail given to the stagecraft at the candidate’s signature campaign rallies.
