I am always amazed at people like Donald Trump who lie about things that can be easily proven to be lies. Like, what’s the point? Doesn’t he realize people will check, realize he is lying, and just not believe anything he says? Or does he not care? Or does his broken brain honestly believe the crazy things he says?

After news broke in June 2023 about Trump’s indictment for several crimes related to the classified documents he stole from the White House, Trump was obviously speaking to many MAGA Republicans, ginning up support and crying “why me!’. One of these people he was crying to was Kari Lake, the wacko who thinks she’s the rightful governor of Arizona, and is now running for Kyrsten Sinema’s seat in the Senate.

Lake spoke to Trump, and he reportedly said, “Kari, I never thought this is what my future would look like, when I graduated first in my class at Wharton. I didn’t think they’d be indicting me and trying to call me a criminal.”

First, that is just such a Trump thing to say. Second, it’s a lie. I know, what a surprise. And Trump has told this lie before in the past, so it’s been fact checked. Trump vacillates between being first in his class or top of his class with honors. Well, he didn’t do that either. Both records from the University of Pennsylvania and Trump’s classmates dispute these claims.

In 1968, The Daily Pennsylvanian published a list of the 56 students who were on the Wharton Dean’s List that year — Trump’s name is not among them.

“I recognize virtually all the names on that list,” 1968 Wharton graduate Stephen Foxman said, “and Trump just wasn’t one of them.”

1968 Wharton graduate Jon Hillsberg added that there was no indication on the 1968 Commencement Program that Trump graduated with any honors whatsoever. A copy of the program acquired from the Penn Archives lists 20 Wharton award and prize recipients, 15 cum laude recipients, four magna cum laude recipients and two summa cum laude recipients for the Class of 1968. Trump’s name isn’t anywhere on those lists.

“If he had done well, his name would have shown up,” Foxman said.

There were 366 graduates in 1968, and the Dean’s List of 56 students represents approximately the top 15 percent of the class. Trump not being in the top 15% suggests that his academic record at Wharton wasn’t as outstanding as he has claimed, and he certainly wasn’t FIRST in his class.

Back in 2019, Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen testified to Congress that he had sent letters to Trump’s high schools, colleges and the College Board (creator of the SAT), threatening them with legal action and jail time if they ever released Trump’s academic records. Cohen provided a record of one such letter sent to the president of Fordham University, which Trump attended for two years before transferring to complete his undergraduate degree at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Trump’s high school has confirmed receiving an identical letter, while the University of Pennsylvania and the College Board declined to comment.

Now if Trump was at the top of his class, or FIRST, why the need to threaten the schools? It’s like, the lies are so unreal and unnecessary. Wharton/Penn is a great school. Obviously we know his father asked a friend at Penn to get Donald into the university, so he didn’t get in on his own merits, but he did graduate and that’s all that matters. Why lie? As a non-sociopathic person, it’s hard to understand.