Did you know that Truthout is a nonprofit and independently funded by readers like you? If you value what we do, please support our work with a donation.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) responded to misogynistic insults from President Donald Trump on Thursday morning, in which the commander-in-chief disparaged her intelligence and academic record.
Trump made the comments during a Fox Business interview. “AOC was a poor student … this is not even a smart person, other than she’s got a good line of stuff,” the president said about Ocasio-Cortez. “I mean, she goes out and she yaps.”
The legislator, however, who has defended herself from racist attacks in the past from Trump and other conservatives, has earned academic accolades, including graduating cum laude from her alma mater, Boston University.
Ocasio-Cortez noted that the president himself has been less than forthcoming when it comes to his academic record.
Let’s make a deal, Mr. President:
You release your college transcript, I’ll release mine, and we’ll see who was the better student.
Loser has to fund the Post Office. https://t.co/OXnmJxufIw
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 13, 2020
“Let’s make a deal, Mr. President. You release your college transcript, I’ll release mine, and we’ll see who was the better student,” she wrote in a tweet responding to a video of his interview.
“Loser has to fund the Post Office,” she added.
The last line of her tweet referenced comments Trump made Wednesday that caused many to speculate he was purposely hurting USPS in order to sabotage the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
In the past, Trump has demanded to see college transcripts from politicians he abhors while at different times going so far as to threaten his former schools with legal action to prevent his academic record from becoming public.
During the 2012 presidential race between former President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney (who is now a U.S. senator), Trump tried to entice Obama to release his college transcripts by promising to donate $5 million to charity in response. Yet Trump also tried other methods to get Obama’s records released, including urging the press to publish them in what would likely have been an illegal manner.
While campaigning in 2015 and 2016, Trump refused to release his own college transcripts. His former lawyer, Michael Cohen, even testified to Congress that the Republican candidate had ordered him to send threatening letters and calls to his alma maters, a fact which Fordham University later confirmed to be true.
Trump has prided himself as being a successful student, calling his academic career “super genius stuff.” Others, however, including former admissions officials who helped him transfer to the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, have noted his records weren’t noteworthy.
“I certainly was not struck by any sense that I’m sitting before a genius. Certainly not a super genius,” former UPenn admissions official James Nolan, who met with Trump and his father regarding the former transferring to the school, later recounted in an interview with The Washington Post.
A terrifying moment. We appeal for your support.
In the last weeks, we have witnessed an authoritarian assault on communities in Minnesota and across the nation.
The need for truthful, grassroots reporting is urgent at this cataclysmic historical moment. Yet, Trump-aligned billionaires and other allies have taken over many legacy media outlets — the culmination of a decades-long campaign to place control of the narrative into the hands of the political right.
We refuse to let Trump’s blatant propaganda machine go unchecked. Untethered to corporate ownership or advertisers, Truthout remains fearless in our reporting and our determination to use journalism as a tool for justice.
But we need your help just to fund our basic expenses. Over 80 percent of Truthout’s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors.
Truthout has launched a fundraiser, and we have a goal to add 280 new monthly donors in the next 72 hours. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger one-time gift, Truthout only works with your support.