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.