The White House denied an allegation that President Trump paid a friend to take the SAT for him.
“Mary Trump and her book’s publisher may claim to be acting in the public interest, but this book is clearly in the author’s own financial self-interest,” White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews told the Washington Examiner Tuesday. “President Trump has been in office for over three years working on behalf of the American people — why speak out now?”
In her family memoir, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, Mary Trump writes in a copy of the book obtained by the Washington Examiner that Donald Trump, having “set his sights” on the University of Pennsylvania, approached a friend and his eldest brother Fred Trump Jr. for help.
“Even though Maryanne had been doing his homework for him, she couldn’t take his tests, and Donald worried that his grade point average, which put him far from the top of his class, would scuttle his efforts to get accepted,” Mary Trump writes. “To hedge his bets, he enlisted Joe Shapiro, a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his SATs for him. Donald, who had never lacked for funds, paid his buddy well.
“Not leaving anything to chance, he also asked Freddy to speak with James Nolan, a friend from St. Paul’s, who happened to work in Penn’s admissions office. Maybe Nolan would be willing to put in a good word for Freddy’s little brother.”
She continues: “Freddy was happy to help. … It would be a relief to have Donald out of the way.”
Trump first matriculated at Fordham University in the Bronx (a borough of New York), commuting 30 minutes from his parents’ house, before transferring in the fall of 1966 to the University of Pennsylvania.
The book, due to be released next week, claims that Trump’s father, Fred Trump Sr., treated his children with contempt.
“The president describes the relationship he had with his father as warm and said his father was very good to him,” Matthews said. “He said his father was loving and not at all hard on him as a child. Also, the absurd SAT allegation is completely false.”
