Behind the Bastards - Part One: The Complete, Insane Story of Trump University

Episode Date: March 5, 2019

In Episode 50, Robert is joined by Miles Gray (The Daily Zeitgeist) and they discuss a Trump-adjacent topic: Trump University. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's poppin' my bubble raps? Nope. That was another failure. It can't all be hit, Sophie. I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards, the show where I tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history. And like every third episode, I pick a really bad introduction to try out. But we're gonna hit a new catchphrase.

Yeah, yeah, thank you. Thank you for your vote of confidence, Sophie. She doesn't believe in me. Nobody does. But, you know, who does believe in me is my guest today, Miles Gray. Hello. Miles. Man, really great to do a podcast. Gotta tell you. You love that?

I'm loving it, you know. I'm loving everything about today. So it's great to be here. You don't get a lot of podcasts in your life. No. It's kinda cool. Miles, we're talking about Trump University today. What do you know about Trump University? I mean, not that much. I mean, I know, you know, the basics. You know, the president had a fraudulent university.

Yes, and I think like a lot, not all, but many for-profit colleges and universities. It's just a big graft. Yeah, it's a big con game. I think most people know that much that like he had a for-profit university. Right. And it was scamier than full-sale. What's full-sale? The one for like the entertainment industry or something? They'll put you, you're gonna be working on video games in a year, buddy.

Or yeah, that kind of shit. Being the custodian at a developer office. Yeah. It's crazy how giant that field was. You'll be certified to clean a server room. It might say something dangerous about our society that one of the most successful and profitable cons of all time involved dozens of different people independently making fake schools to grift people out of money. It might say something really bad about us.

Yeah. But I mean, it's clever. It's clever. It's a smart, it's a great con. Today, we're not gonna be talking about a great con. Aw. Yeah, but it made money. It's just a straightforward, just bullshit university? It's not straightforward.

Okay, well that's good. It's just not as good a con as the university of f***. Now, about once a week, someone on Twitter will be like, you should do, when's your Donald Trump episode coming out? And I'm never gonna do a whole episode about just his life. It's been covered too many times. Yeah, just search any other podcast. Yeah, there's a ton of...

But I was always kind of, Trump University is one of those things that like, I knew something shady had gone on. I knew he'd gotten sued in order to repay a bunch of money to people who got defrauded. Right. But I didn't really know anything about it. And so, I just kind of got interested in like, reading about Trump University. Okay. And so like this weekend, I got really high and I couldn't sleep.

And I found a book called Trump U, Inside Trump University, written by a guy named Stephen Gilpin. Now, Stephen builds himself as essentially the only honest man inside Trump University. And I think he's fudging the truth to some degree. Yeah. But a lot of what he says sounds credible. He's not like totally... He definitely writes himself out of having a role in the bad parts.

Right, right, right. But... Yeah. He's like Tiffany Trump. He's like... You know, where she's like, yeah, it's my dad. But like, I'm like the one who's like, wearing white at the State of the Union, talking s*** behind his back, trying to save my own rep.

Is she? Because I know this is a bad look. I mean, yeah, all the like, you know, rumor stuff about her is that like, she just hates like what her life has become, or at least likes to openly talk s*** about her dad. I could see that being true. That's a rough position as a kid, yeah. I mean, we joke.

I feel like you don't even probably know her actual name. Yeah. He's like, and you... No, I mean, she's talked to any given New York Times White House correspondent more than he has Tiffany. Yeah, seriously, Maggie Haberman. He's like, are you Maggie? He's like, no, dad.

Probably not. The New York Times journalist. Okay, so... Sorry. So he's an insider. He's an insider. He's a whistleblower. He's one of the sources we'll have for this.

Well, whistleblower's the wrong word. He got paid to write a book about it after the president started running for the president. So he's like a four-higher whistle player. He's a... For a band. He's a lower echelon of grifter. Yeah, right, right, right. It's a fair grift.

Like, people want to know about this thing. Experience, okay. I'm not going to call you a bad person for cashing in on it at that point. But you're not... He's not a hero, for sure. Yeah. He was a foot soldier in this guy. Yeah, yeah, of course.

And he's just capitalizing on his bad deeds. But hey, it's America, baby. Hey, if you want to hire me for your fraudulent university, I can be reached on Twitter at I write okay. What would you teach? You know, whatever. Surgery. It's all good.

That sounds so dope. Yeah. Yeah, be a teacher, just cut open animals and stuff all day. Dude, Professor Roberts, tight, dude. We did surgery on a fucking dead cow with a samurai sword. He was just chopping away. We just stabbed the shit out of it. I don't know.

He said it was like a bypass. Now we're all MDs. This class is just 40 days. Oh, boy. Yeah. When I get rich, that's my plan. Fake university. Fake medical school.

I respect that. I support it. Yeah. I think the university starts in 2004. When Donald Trump, Michael Sexton, and some guy named Jonathan formed Trump University, LLC. At this point, the vision was that Trump U would be a long distance web learning solution, where busy housewives and people looking to start a second career could take courses

in real estate and business management. Michael Sexton, a longtime Trump employee, noted that the company also planned to experiment with live instructional programs. Trump's lawyer filed for a patent around the same time, claiming that Trump U would provide quote, educational services in the nature of conducting online courses in the fields of business and real estate. Okay. It's supposed to be like an online business.

Yeah. Just whatever. It's real estate. It's business. Yeah. It's making money, baby. It's making money, baby. So the first headquarters for Trump University was one of the few buildings Donald Trump actually

owns, the 72 Tower Trump Building in 40 Wall Street in Midtown Manhattan. Now, the building is an interesting space. It costs per square foot about half the going rate of space in that part of Manhattan. Why would a skyscraper in such an illustrious location be so cheap? Yeah. Bloomberg.com has a little bit of an explanation on that. Okay. Yeah.

So Donald Trump took over 40 Wall Street in 1995. Prosecutors have filed criminal charges against at least 29 people conducted to 12 alleged scams tied to the building. Nine other firms have faced serious regulatory claims. Authorities prevailed in most but not all of the cases. So. It's a scam city. Scam city tower.

Donald Trump's strategy with the Trump building seems to be this, give shady as people an opportunity to rent dirt cheap Wall Street real estate so they can put that address on their documents and pretend to be legitimate companies. Holy shit. How could this be a thing? 40 Wall Street? New York? New York?

Oh shit. Yeah. Oh, you don't believe it? Pull up to the building. Pull up. Pull up to the building. It's a real thing. On the floor.

On a milk crate. It. Wow. Of course. Of course. I don't know why I'm always like surprised but that's kind of cool. That's like for the people who like have those private jets that you can, that are on the tarmac and they're like, you know, for 500 bucks, you can have a photo shoot in here.

Yeah. And pretend. Yeah. That you are wealthy. That you're wealthy. Well, you're still probably wealthy if you're blowing 500 bucks on a photo shoot. I mean. But you're not private jet wealthy.

Yeah. But they're also like, I've also seen the kind of person who is so hell bent on, you know, boosting their Instagram visibility that they would go, you know, well out of their resources to do something like that. That is the dumbest thing I can think of doing. Spending $500 to pretend that you have access to a private jet. Yeah. It's just sad.

I. Yeah. That's the dumbest thing. It's like renting of like a dick extension. Yeah. It's like for a second, but what good is that you're still the weird needle dick guy. It's like paying a guy with a giant dick to take sex photos that you then send to, or dick pics that you then send to people who haven't asked for them.

Right. To pretend that you have a big dick. Even better. Yeah. It's like, it's like, yeah, it's just in a riborose of sad. And then someone who's, you know, drawn by that is going to be like, so can I see it? And like, oh, I can take you to this jet though. Bigger.

Now, there's another fun quote from that Bloomberg article, quote, a cheap way to get a 40 Wall Street address is to grab space on the 28th floor, which is broken up into small offices. The firms listed in the lobby directory for that floor include your trading room, a foreign exchange operation ordered shut by an Australian court in 2012, an Asian aim incubator co, which Malaysian regulators put on a list of possible scams, stylish and international law whose founder was banned from practicing law in Virginia, an ERO capital group run by a man convicted of credit card fraud. So.

Wait, what's the incubator scam? I don't know. We're making, we're making money off. I only had so many time, much time. Falsy incubators. This week. Yeah. It's, it's, so it's, it's a scam tower and specifically has a scam floor.

Yeah. So yeah. So is everyone, what's on the other floors also shady businesses? Some legitimate businesses. I'm sure. Who just got lucky, the, the cheap space. Yeah. I'm sure there's someone legitimate working out of there, but it, it has a reputation

with the SEC of being like one of the biggest hosts to fraudulent scams in the country. Yeah. Like your easiest callers are just to go like, look at new businesses. See who's working for you. Wall Street. Okay. This is probably shady. Yeah.

But you know, that's the kind of thing only experts are going to notice. Joe Sixpax sitting at home in Milwaukee or Pasadena or Phoenix is going to see Wall Street on an address and assume that it's like legit because New York's got the most expensive real estate in the world. Now, Trump University was not the brainchild of Donald Trump. Michael Sexton, who went on to become the Trump U CEO, had the idea to license the Trump name to sell for profit education. This new university was announced via a Trump Tower press conference on May 23rd, 2005.

Here's Stephen Gilpin, author of Trump U. Quote, with Michael Sexton and other top executives by his side, Donald Trump outlined how Trump University would consist of online courses, CD-ROMs and other learning programs for business professionals. Bloomberg.com reported on the splashy unveiling that Donald launches his own online self-directed learning courses and they differ mightily from the usual fare, wrote Brian Hindo. With business schools around the country uning Donald Trump's reality TV vehicle, The Apprentice is a teaching tool, perhaps it was just a matter of time before the Donald cut out the middleman.

On May 23rd, the real estate mogul formally launched Trump University, a foray into the fast-growing field of online education. Courses are expected to begin as early as Thursday, May 25th. Yeah. I just love trying to hang your hat on the fact that you have CD-ROMs as part of your curriculum. 2005. I know.

Just simpler days. I do miss CD-ROMs. I do miss CD-ROMs. Now almost as soon as that press conference was conferenced, the New York State Department of Education sent a letter to Trump University. They politely pointed out that using the term university was actually a violation of state law because no one involved in the project had bothered to go about getting the kind of accreditation that's actually necessary to call yourself a university and offer classes

and training. Turns out you can't just do that. Turns out there's like laws about what a university is. Sexton promised the Department of Education that Trump University would not instruct students in New York. He also promised to remove the 40 Wall Street address from the letterhead and promotional material. None of this was done.

Sexton, Trump and company ignored the Department of Education and just plowed ahead with their plan to offer a basically illegal fake school. Wow. Yeah, it's amazing. The fucking falls. Yeah. Man. Yeah, just.

That's admirable to be an sociopath. Yeah. It seems. In some ways. It's at least, I don't know, consistency is impressive in a certain extent. Yeah. I think that's the through line of this whole series. Yeah.

You know, like every time I'm here, it's just always like the balls. The balls. The balls on these bastards. That first mover advantage. Yeah. Like nobody expects you to be the guy who's going to do something this shitty. So if you do it, there's a good chance no one will stop you. Right.

Yeah. And that's how it works. That's like, yeah. And you know, eating out of a salad bar, like at a supermarket salad bar, at first you're like, ah. Oh, I do that all the time. Yeah. And look, but no one's probably going to say anything to you.

No, nobody ever says anything. Yeah. No. They just, if anything, they'll speak in hush tones to each other. No. And I buy elephant garlic at the, at the grocery store, but I go to the self-checkout thing and I make it look like regular garlic, I say like 250 of garlic. Look at you.

I'm a monster. Just save these tidbits for another podcast called Life Hacks with Robert Evans. With Robert Evans. This is what you do. It's all just, it's the best of scams that I've learned from behind the bastards, but in a way that any person can do it. Look, you know, there's, there's two kinds of scams in this world. There's, there's scams that hurt good people and there's scams that hurt giant entities

who can't feel pain. Sure. Yeah. And then, yeah, sometimes, you know, but unless like, you know, sometimes the people working at the store, they get in trouble because, you know, the corporations are unforgiving. Sometimes I can find a victim for all my thieving. That's terrible. This empathy that I have.

Ah, screw it. I mean, this is the show, yeah. It's like, it's like stealing stamps from the post office. Yeah. How do you steal stamps from the post office? Oh, a magician never reveals who steals the stamps. I love that. That's your flex.

Y'all know how to steal stamps from the post office on my new show, Life Hacks with Robert Evans. Stealing from the post office. Oh boy. Okay. So. Where were we? Sometimes.

Yes. So Donald Trump and Mike Sexton and company ignore the Department of Education and just continue to offer an illegal fake school and it's fine. Wow. That just happens. So it might have seemed to a lot of people that Trump University was somewhat legitimate at this point, partly because Sexton actually brought on accredited human beings to design the courses.

The chief learning officer was a guy named Roger Shank, a PhD expert in learning science and artificial intelligence. He's the CEO of Socratic Arts, a company that designs curriculums. Several other legitimate educational experts were brought into design courses. So you got to think back to 2005 before Donald Trump is the guy he is now. He's on the apprentice, but he's just like a rich guy. It's only been like the first one season at that point. This is like in the first season and most people don't know that for-profit universities

are a scam. Right, right, right. They're like, oh, it's just an alternative. So this does look like, okay, well, they've hired the right people. So where did the capital come from? They just had those people- Donald Trump put in $3 million. Okay, did I miss that part?

He invested his own money and I hadn't said it yet. He funds this. Okay, that makes sense. He drops in $3 million to get this thing off the ground. So they hire people. They put in some resources. It looks like they're trying to make a legitimate-ish school, like within the standards of the- Right, it's not like, oh, and they're head of curriculum, Mavis Beacon.

Yeah. And they're like, what? No, she only teaches typing. Three online courses were designed at first, each available for $300. So it's not like a ridiculous rate, either. These courses offered instruction in real estate, marketing, and entrepreneurship. Students worked online in groups of six to 12 and had the freedom to finish the courses on their own timeframe.

Here's how Stephen Gilpin describes these early classes. Quote, Entrepreneurship students would be asked to assume the role of a venture capitalist and analyze a business plan. They would then submit their work to classmates for a peer review. A course would consist of three such assignments. People learned the hard way, trying to replicate the classroom experience isn't particularly effective, said Michael Sexton.

Education is worthless without feedback. This system enables however many students we have to get live feedback about their work. This is not for somebody who wants to put a sheepskin on a wall and think that is going to meaningfully help their career. So- Wait, what's that mean? I think like a diploma. Like this isn't just a diploma bill.

Oh, gotcha. Is that a thing? They call that a sheepskin? I'd never heard that before, but I feel like everyone who works with Donald Trump was born in the 20s. Right. That's a weird word for this. When diploma was on a sheepskin.

But you can also see like already it's kind of a con, because you're having your work graded by, like when you put it that way it sounds legitimate, but your work's being graded by your fellow students because that's cheaper. Right. And then they don't give a fuck either, like that all depends on what those other students are putting in. If that was me, I wouldn't read anybody's thing and I would be like, yeah, it felt a little derivative.

Felt a little derivative. And that would be my feedback for everything because I'm not reading it. I'm not doing the work. No, not if you're paying 300 bucks to supposedly have a teacher. Yeah, because I'm swindling myself with my lack of effort. The scam within the scam. Yeah. There's always a scam in the scam.

So at this stage, it's definitely a kind of con, but it's not really much more of a con than other for-profit universities, right? Students aren't paying insane prices for these courses. So nobody's going to go deep in debt paying 300 bucks for three courses. Yeah, for nothing. That's 900 bucks. No, that sucks to lose, but it's not that bad. Yeah, for information you probably could have got from like Googling, like, how do I become

a businessman? How do I become a businessman? Yeah, and compared to like Full Sail University, like Trump University kind of verged on legitimate. Right. Like it seems like a pretty good deal, maybe. What's your beef with Full Sail? Is it that, are they that egregious with their- I remember as a kid, all the video game magazines I would read, like PC Gamer would always have

ads for Full Sail and one of my friends wound up paying them a lot of money because that was his lifelong dream and he didn't know any better and like, it's the bullshit thing to do. Somebody wants to make video games and you trick them into paying a bunch of money? Your dicks. Is your friend finally working in video games? No. Oh.

No, that never worked out. You know what will work out? These fine products and possibly services that we advertise on our show, although because it's randomly slotted in, it might be an ad for another podcast and then my products and services line will be nonsense, but I don't know, Miles. I don't know what else to do. Good explanation. I don't know what else to do.

Well, I'm ready. This is the world we live in. Roll the roulette dice. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations and you know what, they were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. Because the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation.

In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. I'm the good and bad ass way, nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen.

Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole.

My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your

podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message

that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Are we back?

We are back. In the USSR. Well, that would be nice. If there's one thing I know about the USSR, it's that they loved podcasting. Big fans. Oh, yeah. Big fans, the podcast. I think they invented it.

Probably. That sounds right. They invented the pod, for sure. All communists. Vodcasting. Vodcasting. Vodgusting. Yes.

Man, did you see that documentary, Icarus? Oh, yeah. Oh, fucking amazing. I love that doctor. Again, the balls. I love that Russian doctor. The balls. Taft, you saw out of trapdoor in the wall to swap out urine samples.

I mean, you know what? Maybe you do deserve it. I have no problem with athletes doping. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I don't get the big deal. Just let them all fucking dope. And let's see who's the first person and whose heart explodes while trying to compete. Exactly. And that's who loses.

Yeah. Or just have a special version of the Olympics where we do see, look, if you can put the cheat codes on, how far can you take this? The way I think it should work. So I have a friend that I will occasionally have drinking contests with, and the rule is always, whoever can drink the most without vomiting, and so we try to finish like a two-liter keg of beer. Okay.

And if you're the first, but you drink so fast that you puke it up, you still lose. That's how drugging yourself in a sporting event should work. Oh, wow. If you get away from it for X years, you were smart enough. You know, Lance Armstrong, you're four years clear. Okay. You get to keep your titles. Huh.

That's how I feel. Okay. And it should be fine for me to steal garlic from Ralph's. I mean, look, you're just upgrading. I'm just not going to pay three and a half dollars for elephant garlic. It's ludicrous. Okay, look, I can see it in your eyes, man. Yeah, you're not going to pay three dollars for that elephant garlic.

Steal it from the damn farm if I got it. Right. Yeah. Okay. Let's get back to this grift that was not kind-hearted, like my garlic. Elephant garlic, yes. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a healthy grift, I feel. So the first major textbook for this Nata University was called Trump 101, The Way to Success. You can still find the book on Amazon.com. It's a little over 200 pages, which seems like a lot to say, inherit $700 million from your dad. It's kind of a book list review that describes the chapters, so I'm going to read that two miles.

Okay. This might teach you enough to start in real estate. Yeah, let me get it. This collection of Trump's wisdom, inspiration, and advice is organized around 20 distinctive motivational themes, including don't waste your life on work you don't love. Okay. Set the bar high. Tough it out.

Be persistent. The proof is in the doing. Learn by doing and taking risks. Your gut is your best advisor. Listen to your instincts. Negotiate to win. Use diplomacy. Come against the tide.

The comfort zone can pull you under. Wait for the right pitch. Business success is all about patience and timing. And do more. Always do more. Constantly try to top yourself. I feel like I understand his tweeting strategy better after the reading. Wow.

Those are such empty phrases. Do more. Yeah. It's like all those motivational posters from the 90s that would just be like a hot air balloon. Yeah. And be like, never stop out doing yourself. Get to win.

Higher heights. Yeah. Use diplomacy. And I'm going to guess that that chapter didn't go into much more detail than use diplomacy. Yeah. Yeah. What a guy to get advice on diplomacy. The end of that sentence is use diplomacy if you're a loser.

If you're a loser. And next chapter, ballin' out of control. Okay. Now, Miles, you just did a pretty good Trump and I know you do a fantastic Australian. Can you do Australian Trump? Oh, no. He's a bit like this. So, if you're Australian Trump, that might be flying, speaking of Icarus, flying to

the sun. If I smoke another blunt. Yeah. All right. All right. We'll get another blunt in here. In promotional material for the book, Donald Trump himself explained the value of this weighty tome.

Another purpose of this book is to introduce you to Trump University, which grew out of my desire to impart the business knowledge I accumulated over the years and to find a practical, convenient way to teach success. Trump University doesn't just bear my name. I'm actively involved in it. I participated in creating the curricula and my words, ideas and image have been woven into the courses we provide. I'm deeply and actively involved in Trump University because I firmly believe in the

power of education and its function as an engine of success. I want to help people and simply put, the Trump University students want to be successful. I'm on their side. Wow. Again, even if for all the amount of words that were in there. Yeah, a lot of them. You could really just boil that down to one sentence is, this is good and I'm involved. Yeah, this is good and I'm involved.

Go to school. That's it. Yeah. All that other shit. That's what's so funny is like it reminds me of me when I used to write essays in high school. Yeah. Or like essay answers.

And you're trying to hit that word count. Oh my God. I would fucking have like 90 word sentences. Yeah. You know, just to just say like Cardinal Richelieu was Louis XIII's greatest advisor or whatever the fuck, whichever Louis that was, the 14th, it was one of the Louis. You know, not enough kids named Richelieu anymore. Yeah.

Well, you know, it's part of the pacification of this country. I know. Name, if you're out there and you've got a child, name it Richelieu. Name it Richelieu. Yeah. Name it Ricola. Oh yeah. Those are great men's when you grab a sore throat.

Hashtag branded content. Yeah. Ricola. If you want to sponsor the show, we'll find a baby to name. Oh yeah. Yeah. We can do that for sure. I'll change my name to Ricola.

I think we have that power. Okay. At the outset, Trump University students were promised classes that would be taught by actual business school professors who'd communicate with students through an online bulletin board. So, you know, like a real online university, there would be regular Q&A sessions where students could ask Mr. Trump for advice on their businesses. So this was billed as a practical business training program where students would receive thoughtful and semi-direct advice from one of the world's most famous businessmen.

In the press release for Trump University, Donald Trump claimed that his whole goal with the project was to give back to the world and create, quote, a legacy as an educator. He even promised to hand any profits from his business over to an unspecified charity. An unspecified charity, fuck you. Well, it's always going to be an unspecified charity. Holy shit. Wow. I'm going to start doing that.

That's fucking genius. All of the profits from this show are donated to an unspecified charity, which is me buying a survivalist compound in Oregon. Right. Yeah. That unspecified charity. Well, now it's specific. Well, yeah.

You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. I know. It's amazing. Did you clean up the house? I did some unspecified choice.

Some unspecified cleaning. Some unspecified things. Unspecified chores. Unspecified charity. Yo, you should make a t-shirt like that. Cops pull you over. Do you have a license? I have an unspecified license.

I have an unspecified license of sorts. I can get the fuck out of the car. Of sorts. Yeah. Oh, boy. Oh, yeah. So, I didn't even read the last Trump quote about how this isn't about money. Here's Donald again.

If I had a choice of making lots of money or imparting lots of knowledge, I think I'd be as happy to impart knowledge as to make money. Get the fuck out of it. Oh, my God. Good for you. He still doesn't actually say that imparting knowledge is more important. Yeah. Like, he sets it up, but then he's like, oh, they're both equal.

They're both equal and, you know, whatever. I like money. I like money. I'll do the good thing, too. But also knowledge. Yeah. When they say knowledge is money. That is what they say with Betsy DeVos as the Secretary of Education.

Or money is knowledge. Yeah. The ability to access knowledge. Yeah. That's probably more accurate. That's probably more accurate. Yeah. Now, in 2005, the Apprentice Ted, as we just discussed, just finished its first season.

It was one of the most popular shows on television for reasons I will never understand. In addition to that, the real estate market was in the midst of an outrageous boom cycle that would later give way to the great crash of 2008. So, for a year in change, TrumpU existed as a semi-legit, seeming adult education program for people interested in dipping their toes into the booming real estate market. So, makes sense. But by 2007, the market was starting to look distinctly less boomy and more busty. As the economy started to shift, so did Trump University.

Roger Schenke and all the other professional teachers and curriculum designers who'd been hired at the onset of the project were let go. Schenke was told that the school had burnt through the three million in funding Donald Trump had pumped into the venture. Schenke later told the Daily Beast, quote, they put a certain amount of money into it and then the money stopped suddenly. I said, what happened? And they said, well, we just don't have any more money and we need to make money quickly

in some other way. Oh, that's what you want to hear from a college? Wait, that's what the college told him? Yeah, that's what I'm guessing it's a person at the college. Yeah, but like, we need money really fast and it ain't going to be like this. You're great at this, but now we got to make more money. Oh, wow. We're going to find some other way to do it in our college.

I can't wait to know what that plan was. Oh, it's going to be fun. It's going to be fun. So Ronald Schachenberg was a sales manager at Trump University from late 2006 to 2007. He later recalled this shift in a deposition that he made during one of the numerous lawsuits as a result of this fake college, quote, this is Schachenberg. Around February 2007, the direction of Trump University's business drastically changed to live events and seminars driven by high pressure front-end salesmen.

And experienced in real estate making high pressure sales. So these live events were built as workshops and learning courses, but they were really just excuses to upsell students on more expensive training. Rather than using curriculum designed by actual experts and anything, Trump U brought in a guy named Mark Dove. Schachenberg described him as a guy who, quote, essentially owns that front-end high pressure speaker scam world, provided speakers, instructors, mentors, and salespeople to Trump University. And these people brought with them their own programs, which turned into Trump University

programs. They were as comfortable with this new direction of business as I believed it to be very unethical. There were good people involved at the beginning, or whatever, the guy from the apprentice. They probably don't fully understand the kind of scam artist that the president is. No, nobody. I mean, 2005. Yeah. Really different time.

Oh, it's the apprentice guy. Sure. Yeah, why great. He's popular on TV. There's a check. We'll teach people some real stuff. And then so the Mark Dove guy, they said he owns just sort of like the same people who probably do like time-share sales.

The exact same people. Or is like, come here, and then we're gonna fucking lock you in the room. So they switch over to live events, and these live events are administrated by people who are billed as teachers, but who are actually salespeople. They're just closers. Yeah, they're just closers. Exactly. That must have been so fun.

Yeah, it must have been great. They made a lot of money. He's so full of shit, and just go up there with all this confidence. Like I can't wait for you guys to be flying on your own jets. Look at this Rolex. I'm gonna give someone this Rolex by the end of tonight, because guess what? By tomorrow morning, I'm gonna have enough for three more of these. I don't know if you could see, Miles, but I just voted for you to be president.

Yeah. Oh my God. I couldn't stop myself. I'm gonna start a new con man podcast where I'm selling people dreams. Yeah, I mean, all podcasts are a con if they're successful. That's true. I mean, people don't even know. There's not even a guy named Stalin.

Oh. Yeah, I made that up for this podcast. Man, you, so I'm telling you. Alex Jones? Just me and a wig. Alex Jones? My friend, Alex Jones. So this is around the time, 2007, that Stephen Gilpin, the author of that book, got hired

by the university. He had a lot of experience in real estate, and his business had fallen on hard times as the market started to collapse. They hired him initially to be a one-man phone line for Trump U students who had questions about real estate matters. Gilpin recalled in his book being surprised to learn that nobody else involved in the management or operations of Trump University had any kind of background in real estate. It was a real estate school run by people who had never done real estate.

What, where'd you work? Just for Hilton. Trump Foundation. It was the Trump Foundation. Oh, yeah, Trump Foundation. Okay, anything else? Nah. No, no.

I've just been bilking people out of money for a while. Yeah, okay. Now, during this whole time, Trump University ads continued to brag in official promotional material that all the instructors at these live events were real estate experts handpicked by Donald Trump. The Attorney General of New York State later disputed this in a filing, quote, in fact, respondents lacked substantiation for the claims that their instructors and mentors were successful real estate entrepreneurs.

Not a single one was handpicked by Donald Trump. Many came to Trump University from jobs having little to do with real estate investments, and some came to Trump University shortly after their real estate investing caused them to go into bankruptcy. So it's just failed real estate investors in the context? Yeah, people who don't know anything about real estate, and if they do, they've just bankrupted themselves. Bankrupted themselves and like, well, I guess I'll teach people how to do this.

Oh, it's the American dream, baby. Just keep failing on up. God, this is such a great country. We really nailed a lot, man. Just gotta have the balls, you know, that's all. If you just lie for 70 straight years and you're a tall white guy, sometimes not, but always if you're a tall white guy, there's no limit to what you can achieve. Oh, no.

No. Yeah. You could even one day be the president of the United States. You could be. You could be. That's what I'm going to do after I shift next year and start writing for the Daily Wire. Yeah.

Oh, great. Yeah. You want to have that arc where you're like, oh, no, I used to be a leftist, I used to be all this. Oh, my God. Yeah, you could. And you could probably primary Trump. Oh, yeah.

Well, I won't be quite old enough. Oh. Yeah, he'll be out of office by that time. We can doctor some pictures. I'll primary President Dan Coulter from the right. Yeah. Yeah. From the right.

Oh. It'll be the Evans Ingram today. Yeah, the Evans Ingram. Jesus Christ. Okay. So there's a video produced around this time, 2007, called Welcome to Trump University. I want to play this video to you, Miles, and I want you, the listener, to hear it because that way you'll get an idea of how this was sold to prospective clients.

Now, I do want to say up front, this is the only audio of Trump we're going to have in the episode. I had to have a little bit of how he presented this, but we all hear him enough. Right. Yeah. So this is all you're going to have to listen to. This is a promo video. Yeah.

At Trump University, we teach success. That's what it's all about, success. It's going to happen to you. Donald Trump is, without question, the world's most famous businessman. As a real estate developer, he has reshaped the New York skyline with some of that great city's most prestigious and elegant building. Great land ratings. Now, Donald Trump brings his years of experience to the world of business education with a

launch of Trump University. If you're going to achieve anything, you have to take action, and action is what Trump University is all about. Get pumped up. The action is just a small part of Trump University. Trump University is about knowledge, about a lot of different things. Above all, it's about how to become successful. That's about enough of that.

God, what? It was, I mean, you know, it was so bad. Yeah. I really feel bad for people who don't have the media savvy to watch something like that. I mean, oh, this stinks like shit. Now, I think some of that is that, you know, this was 14 years ago. Yeah, but still. They're all a little less savvy.

Oh, hell no. But still, that's bad. That fucking, the voiceover was from like a B action movie from the 80s. Yeah. Just as someone like you who reads stuff in the microphones for a living, that was really bad voice acting. But also just like the tone of his voice. It was so dated.

Yeah. Like that style of voice was like, that's such a mobile gun. In a world. Yeah. And it was like, Dean Marciano is a, you know, disgrace detective. His family was killed. Like that's the kind of weird tone it was. Yeah.

And then it was all like, not even stock video, stock footage with like, that they just animated to move like Ken Burns effect. And they're like, I guess that's fine. And then Trump University was just a graphic of a door. It wasn't even like a building. Yeah. Oh. I do love that like kind of ravey music that kicked on with Donald Trump star.

We all started dancing to it a little bit. Yeah. It was bizarre. I just wondered what it would be like to run into Donald Trump at like a dance club in Berlin. And that's the closest I'm ever going to come to knowing. Yeah. Or he's sitting on the corner of a desk. Yes.

Like it looked like he wasn't that. Sip in a club. Trump. Action. What did he say? Trump action is what it takes to be successful and Trump University is all about action. Again, what does that even mean? What does that even?

The action of giving me your credit card. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. In 2007, the second one took place in Los Angeles around a month later. That is where you'd want to start a scam, Florida, then LA. Yeah. Sensible so far. Each of these live events had about 500 attendees. The events were free, but attendees were encouraged to sign up for longer paid workshops. I see.

That word happening that day? No, no, no. That happened later. Okay. So that you'd come. Okay. So that was just to be like, oh yeah, yeah, come. We'll tell you about it.

We'll teach you about real estate for free. Right. And we'll just tell you just enough vague half sentences that you want to learn a little more. The real meat is to take these longer seminars. Wait till you hear about the cost of these. I got to ask up front. How much do you think people are spending on these seminars?

So and this is what, 2005? 2005. Well, 2007. Oh, people didn't know any better. And they're just, oh man, maybe like two grand. Okay. Okay. I'm going to just read a little passage from Steven Gilpin's book.

The new business model was designed to operate in two stages. First offering aspiring real estate magnets, a free 90 minute profit from real estate orientation. Also known as the preview where they'd be pressured to pay for the second stage, a three day profit from real estate workshop. During the workshop, they'd be enticed and controlled into buying one of the Trump elite packages, which were offered at three price points, $9,995, bronze, $19,495 silver. And then the whopper at $34,995. Oh, I want to jump in.

I want to dry you. Trump gold elite. It didn't stop there. During the gold elite program, there was constant pressure to purchase other Trump University affiliate programs and products, varying in price from $495 to $9,995. As a result, students could ultimately spend upwards of $70,000. Wait, so the first thing is free. First thing is free.

Second thing. To get you to the second thing, which is only to get you to the, so how much is the second thing? Like 1500 bucks. Sometimes a thousand. Some people pay like 500. Sometimes it was flexible a little bit, but yeah. Right.

And whatever it is to get you there because they were really going to rip your head off in the next one. Yeah. 35,000 dollars. I mean, if you're a fucking loser, you can get the bronze for 10 grand. And if you're really trying to, oh my, oh, and I can just see how these, yeah, they're just getting put together in there. Oh yeah.

We're going to get into their promotional material, or not promotional, their sales material in a little bit here. So the first live events were such a hit that Trump University almost immediately jettisoned all of its actual classes. Many of the course books continued to be sold on Amazon and in fact, you can buy some today, but the study courses were dropped and the website stopped being updated. The purpose of Trump University from here on out was to sucker rubes into free investment seminars to try and get them to pay outrageous sums of money for Trump Gold Elite packages.

Now what are the, what, do you know what's in the package? Yeah. So if you're paying 35,000 dollars, you're doing like a series, like a three day series of workshops, you're getting access to what they bill as like this, like secret listing of distressed properties that you can buy that other people don't have access to. You get access to this hotline and you get three days with a mentor who flies in to help you like understand your local real estate market and start setting up deals. They also promise that they'll teach you how to do stuff like get your credit rating increased

presumably so that you can buy property. And they also promise you sources of hard money where you won't have to put your own money up. We'll hook you up with our secret list of people who are willing to like invest in your, and put up money. To front it for you? Yeah. What?

So that's what they're selling people. That's what they're telling people is what you get and I'm sure what they got was something that's different. Yeah. And what our listeners are going to get now is some ads. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations and you know what? They were right.

I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark.

He's on the good and bad ass way and nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful

lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all

bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the summer of 1999, a young woman in South Carolina disappeared in the middle of the night. Her name was Brooke Henson. Seven years passed.

She was presumed dead. And then a tip came in that would turn the entire investigation on its head. He said, I think I found your girl. She's alive. She's in New York. And I said, really? According to this tip, Brooke was now a student at Columbia University. But the small town detective on the case in South Carolina, he didn't believe it.

So he kept poking around. I said, I'm calling about a girl you might know named Brooke Henson. And he said, I wondered when you were going to call. When my son brought her home, I knew she was troubled. The detective ultimately became convinced that she was a master of deception, a spy. But who was this woman really? Find a deep cover on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back.

Talking about Trump U, true diversity. I'm glad to do this, you know, with another fellow Trump U alumna. Yeah. Yeah. It's been a lot of money. What is singular? Alumnus. Alumna.

Alum, whatever. Alumni. The two of us together. Alumni, two of us together. Are you going to the reunion? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's, well, I forget where it is. I think the Queen Mary. Oh, the Queen. Yeah. I think it's going to be fun. Yeah, it's going to be a great time. Although I heard it's not an open bar. Oh, that's a shame.

But it's fine. I love that Trump vodka. Yeah. Oh, man. Made from the finest old, old potatoes of all of the liquor to brand after yourself. Yeah. Trump vodka. Only Dan Aykroyd's been able to get away with that.

Yeah. Well, people like to drink out of a skull. People like to drink out of a skull. People like to drink out of a skull more than they like to drink out of a tower. Oh, yeah. That's the lesson of the failure. Is that the bottle first? Yeah.

It's shaped like one of his towers. Jesus Christ. Get it together. Well, it didn't work out. But it's okay. I think he's doing all right now. Yeah. We'll see.

We'll see. Now, during this whole time, the apprentice continued to air and Trump's personal brand continued to rise among people who assume anyone wearing a suit on TV is a successful businessman. According to the New York Attorney General, quote, Trump University speakers repeatedly insinuated that Donald Trump would appear at the three-day seminar, claiming that he is going to be in town and often drops by and might show up or had just left, or baited students with the promise of a surprise or a special guest speaker.

As students later discovered, these claims were untrue. Rather than being photographed with Donald Trump, they were offered the chance to have photos taken with a life-size photo of Donald Trump. Oh, I remember. I remember this thing. Yeah. This is great. Or it's like a cutout, right?

Basically. Yeah. It was just a cutout of Trump. I love that kind of shit. I missed him. He was just in here and he wanted to tell you guys, he told me personally to tell you guys that what you were doing is going to change your lives. He's going to be sick that he missed you guys.

He's going to be so bummed out. He is so bummed out. Anyway, if you just sign up for the $35,000 package. Anyway, Mark, let me talk to you. You're fucking check bounced. You're fucking going to club this shit up. Get free knowledge, asshole. Trump University was, of course, deeply mixed up with the Trump Foundation, since that's

sort of how the now president referred to run all of his businesses. Every check the business issued was signed by either Donald or one of his kids. Donald didn't have much, if anything to say about the curriculum, such as it was, but he approved every single line of ad copy written about the business and he testified to this in court. Like, I approved all of the ads, all of the promotional material. What an idiot. That's the only thing he did.

And what were those ads like? Well, I found a couple and we'll put them up on our site, BehindTheBastards.com. One of them features Donald Trump looking like Donald Trump in a suit with a big quote above a bunch of small text and the big quote says, if you're not a millionaire by December 2008, you didn't attend my foreclosure workshop. Another has the Trump University logo at the top, which features a lion rearing, like a design of a lion rearing, like he's a fucking British nobleman. And then it says, unheard of real estate market factors have created a all caps bold perfect

storm of profit opportunity. Free introductory class, reserve your seat now, attend this exciting introductory class and learn how you can profit all caps from the biggest real estate cash explosion in decades. Do you have like old ads from like snake oil salesmen from like the Wild West? Because I feel like those ads essentially read like have this same kind of presentation and enthusiasm. Same sort of capitalization.

I'm like, you'll never believe this thing from the Orient. It definitely looks like some of the bottles I've seen of like children's medicinal heroin. Right. It's like amazing tonic. Close the chip. Yeah. Wow. Amazing.

The perfect storm for you to profit. Yeah. Now, when we talk about cons like this, there's always a risk of like coming down too hard on the people who fell for the scam. That's something I want to try to avoid because it is my firm belief that just about everyone has something they will fall for in the same way these people fell for Trump University. Gilpin does a good job of sort of standing up for these people in his book, which is one reason that I have some respect for him.

He's not mean about these people. They aren't dumb folks. Most of them were like nearing retirement age and it's been years as like plumbers or like one of them worked for like an aeronautics company and stuff. They just didn't know anything about real estate. Right. And they've saved up a like a good amount of. Got a nest egg.

Yeah. Money and they can just piss it away at this thing. Yeah. They want to try it out. They want to like make more money for retirement or something like that and Donald Trump is the most famous person they know in real estate because they don't know anything about real estate. Yeah.

Yeah. Vanity Fair did a great job of collecting several of these people's stories. I'd like to read an excerpt from their article. It starts with the tale of June Harris from White Plains, New York. She took a Trump real estate course and found it valuable. So she signed up for a free session in June 2009 after seeing a newspaper ad quote, participants were told to keep a thousand dollars in their pockets at all times as a confidence builder for wealth.

Harris signed up for the three day seminar, which cost her $747.50. She spent the weekend of June 19th at the seminar where she was encouraged to call her credit card company and increase her line of credit. They said that we should invest in property without ever touching our own assets. She wrote in a September 2012 affidavit. The instructor said if we surmounted the fear of losing money, then we would actually make money. She was then encouraged to sign up for the Trump Gold mentorship program at a cost of

$35,000, described as a year long group of seminars and private consultations with Trump instructors. When Harris declined, the agent was very upset and quickly hung up on the phone with me. She wrote in her affidavit. Oh. Yeah. Can you? Oh.

At least she didn't get scammed out of the 35 grand. I know. But I just like, this person was probably being so terrible on the phone too. She's like, I don't know. It's just a lot of money. Come on. You want to be poor all your life. Yes, you want to be poor.

Come on. Get it fucking together. Donald Trump's offering you. You're not grateful? Oh, okay. So you're an idiot. Yeah. Okay.

That's fine. Then be poor. If you're a dumbass, then don't take up our time on our phone line. Well, I don't think, just shut the fuck up. Just click. Just click. Oh my God. Trump University.

So one of the things that was advertised about these courses was that students would be able to learn how to increase their credit score and boost their credit limits, presumably so that they could again buy properties to flip. Trump U employees did coach students through how to get their credit limits increased, largely through lying. Students were taught to list their expected income as a result of the work in real estate they hadn't done yet. Oh my God.

They were told to tell their banks that finding the documentation to prove any of this would be too hard since they needed the limits increased now. Somehow, this often worked because credit card companies and banks are grifters too. Yeah. They're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fuck it. We own you. Yeah.

Fine. We'll get the money either way. It was basically saying, fake it to you, make it in the sense that like, oh well, my projected income and then they just write their own fairy tale. And they're like, you're going to be a millionaire. That's your projected income. Probably, I'm thinking three to four million a year. Yeah, three to four million a year.

It seems about right. It seems about right. Yeah. Net. Yeah. Based on my experience cleaning my apartment, yeah, I think I can make that much in real estate. Yeah.

That's based on what I've been reading. Yeah. That seems about right. Okay. Now, the credit increases were actually important because they were basically the only way normal people could hope to put together the $20,000 to $35,000 needed to pay for gold and silver level packages. So that this didn't seem crazy, Trump U employees would point to the American higher

education system. University is expensive after all, according to time, quote, the teachers were always to be called faculty, a crest that looked like it was borrowed from Harvard or Yale was embedded in the logo and admissions department was listed on the website. The marketing guidelines had sections called catchphrases, buzzwords and tone that encouraged the use of language such as elitist Ivy League and think of Trump University as a real university with a real admissions process, i.e., not everyone who applies is accepted. Now Gilpin points out that Trump did this too in interviews and speeches where he had

to make the case that his fake university was worth the money, quote, Donald Trump often implied that Trump University was somehow inhabited the same intellectual universe as Harvard University. In terms of cost, he was not far off. According to the Harvard website, the total 2015 to 16 cost of tuition at Harvard College without financial aid was $45,278, actually less than the so-called retail value of the Trump Gold Elite package, because it said that the $35,000 package was worth $46,000. Oh, wow, because of all the savings?

Because of all the savings. Hey, I'm taking a bath on this. I'm taking a bath on this. I'm fucking, ugh. This is costing Donald Trump money. Honestly, if all you guys sign up, and I hate to say this, if all of you guys sign up for the Gold package, I'm going to be totally upside down on this thing. Yeah, I'm going to be deep in the red.

But you know what? Just to know that you guys are going to be successful, I'm willing to take that loss. Wow. It's like I'm there. I wish we could get a bunch of materials, and we should just, we should run them. Can we just do an episode where we run the Trump U curriculum? Oh, I have the 135-page Trump University Playbook. You know why it's public domain?

Because of the lawsuit. Because of the lawsuit. Yeah, I would love to just read those, like what the style was, and just hear recordings and just kind of pressure people. Oh, we're going to. Okay, great, great. Yeah, we're going to. Some of that, maybe not as much as I should have included.

Yeah. Again, these poor people too, to know that they were sort of like, the secret to making money is you need to call your bank right now and get that credit extended. Because you need to pay for this shit to me because I'm selling you air. Oh, it's amazing. It really is. Now, like most big businesses, Trump University had a company Playbook, which we just talked about, a 130-some page document that is now on my iPad next to five biographies of Hitler.

It included everything from how far ahead of time employees should show up before a seminar to what they should wear in order to make the company look good. It also included a lot of advice on how speakers could convince someone to drop $35,000 on this bullshit. I know. Thanks to the shameful mountain of lawsuits, this fake school inspired, we have access to this wonderful document. Politico actually has it available as a PDF, so you can download it right now.

Oh, great. We'll be up on our site. Yeah, yeah. We'll put the link up there. Most of it's boring, but the part that talked about how to sell the workshops to reticent students is really interesting to me, especially since one of the few things we know that Donald Trump actually did for Trump University was approve the Playbook. This is all Trump and possibly Trump dictated in some cases.

Do you think that's the case or like, because I can't imagine him putting work into anything that someone else did it and he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. One thing that's consistent, even when you hear about Roger Stone and he working on those racist ads against the Mohawk tribe to try to get their casinos banned, he was noted specifically approving the ads. I think that might just be something he really does care about. Anything ad copy. Yeah, ad copy and marketing materials.

Marketing material. Because that's what he's good at. Right. And I guess in a way that's the written version of his identity being out there too, so he wants to be careful with it, I guess. I would not surprise if that he put in legitimate work just to make sure that he was consistent. I also, though, wouldn't be surprised if he goes, oh yeah, it's fine. Yeah.

Yeah. If he's just like, yeah, it's whatever. Oh, yeah. Because he would also brag. He's like, yeah, I did all the work. I actually typed everything with a typewriter. With a typewriter. Yeah.

And I didn't even look at my fingers. Didn't look at my fingies. Did the homerow. Oh man. And there you go. I don't know if he's ever typed. You know he has, but he's like for the camera and he just uses index fingers. Yeah.

He's a hunting pecker for sure. Yeah. And he only uses one fucking hand. Shots fired. Yeah. Sorry. So here's how the Trump University playbook advises an instructor on how to deal with a student who keeps asking what inconvenient questions, someone who has too many questions

for the sales teacher. I'm surprised there wasn't some derogatory nickname in the manual. It's like, if you get one of these. It gets kind of mean actually. Okay. Okay. So here's the handbook instructing the teacher, right? The more concerns you have to resolve, the more power you have given the other person

and they will begin to enjoy the power on a subconscious level. They don't even realize it, but having us wait on them gives them a feeling of supremacy and they feel they are an important sale to us. Do not get in conversations where you answer one question after the other, yet getting no closer to the sale whatsoever. Irrelevant questions take too much time. You lose power by answering them. The person asking the questions always has the power.

You should only allow potential students to ask one of these questions and then take back the power. When you answer one of these questions, give a quick answer and then start asking questions. Examples. I'm not sure who developed the property. I think the real question we should be asking ourselves is, are you ready to change your current lifestyle? Oh my God.

Do not let potential students have more than one concern. What? What's the spending $35,000? It's my health. That's money that could be going to some medical treatments that would allow me to extend my life to keep doing this. It's remarkable. If you've ever bought a new-ish car, any car really, if you buy it from a lot, you're

spending in that ballpark $10,000 to $35,000 and you're going up against a salesman. But they'll always answer, they'll lie in their answers to your questions, but they'll answer a lot of questions because they know it seems shady to do anything else. But the thing is, at least they know they're selling you a car. Yeah. It is a thing that does it. You can actually drive away in it and it will do probably most of what it advertises. Whereas this is like, you got to do this high-pressure shit to be like, look, bro, if they're asking

too many questions, these aren't the type of people who are going to fall for it anyway. It's not like fudging when someone asks if a car is undercoding how well it works. Oh, yeah. You're like, oh, those weather mats? Yeah. Yeah, you're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. Yeah.

They'll do great. Yeah. So the Playbook notes that students should be asked what they do and how many hours a week they are working, as well as whether or not they love their job. The reason to ask this is not simple human interest, but in case someone says they don't have the time to sign up for a three-day workshop, quote, you can come at them strongly and throw this right back at them. Well, insert students' name.

The only reason you don't have the time right now is because you're working 45 hours at a job you don't enjoy. I won't even bring up the hours after you factor in all the time you sit in traffic, taxes, and everything else that's taken out of your paycheck. Have you added up what you net an hour? I bet you wouldn't like that number. You're trying to fool yourself, but you're not fooling me. You came down here today because you're tired of killing yourself just to survive.

We will show you how to thrive in real estate and control your own financial destiny. And the best part is, when you double your income from real estate part-time, you can quit your job, work 25 hours a week, and create more wealth than you have ever dreamed of. Now, let's take it one step at a time. Follow me and let's get you enrolled. Listen closely to the orientation. It's possible if you do exactly what we tell you, we may be able to start helping you put together a deal next Saturday.

Congratulations! Oh, wow. What a journey you just hit me on. That was a whole... Look at you. You're pathetic. You make $0.40 an hour. What the fuck?

Wow. And it literally ends with congratulations. Congratulations! Holy shit. Yeah, there's an exclamation point. That is forceful. Yeah. To be like, yeah, well, you'll be closing a deal.

Congratulations. You've decided you're doing it. And honestly, the future generations of your family are also thanking you right now. All going to thank you right now. Right this second. Babies are going to rip you out of the time stream and give you their thanks. How does that feel? How does what feel?

To start a dynasty. You really should have written copy for this. Man, I used to sell cars. Oh, yeah. I'll bet you did. Oh, yo. Oh, man. The people you learned, like, I wasn't really good at closing because I couldn't lie.

Yeah. But I picked up so... I'm just, you know, anything that's funny to me, like, I'll kind of obsess about. And there were... The people around me were fucking insane. Like, they would say shit like that. Yeah. And they would be like, hey, like, you know, a man or a woman come in, like, for the truck.

Obviously, you got to sell the man, okay? But here's the thing, man. You can't ignore the wife, man, because guess what? The neck, it fucking turns the head, okay? And if you don't tend to that, the sales fucking gone. And you're like, holy shit. Oh, my God. Yeah.

And I'm like, wow, is this something you thought of, like, yeah, as I live, because I live in my van still. Yeah. As a guy who did live in his van. He was just saving his money. Yeah. So he just... Sure.

It was really weird. He lived in his van. Super weird. And but was like closing deals. And I'm not sure what happened to him. I mean... Working in Eric Prince's weird bootleg air force. Or bootleg wall building company.

Yeah. Jesus. So I had to fight myself over exactly how much of this stuff to include. I kind of fell down a rabbit hole when I started reading this playbook. I stepped into this expecting to find sleaze, but I didn't anticipate just how abusive it would all sound. Right. So here's like a chunk of a Q&A between a student and a sales teacher.

Objection, I like this, but I'll do it later. And here's what the teacher is supposed to say in response. I'm glad you made it down here today and didn't procrastinate like you're doing now. Have you added up how much money you have lost by procrastinating in your life? It sounds like it's a very bad habit for you. If I had $10,000 in my hand and I said I'll give it to you for $2,000, would you have to think about it or make a smart financial decision? Well, fuck you.

Yeah, I know. Trump University. What the fuck? Oh, it's amazing. Well, congrats. Hmm. But it looks like you're doing that thing you always do. Always do you piece of shit.

Yeah. Okay, loser. Keep pissing the dollars away. Yeah. Yeah. Enjoy living in the garbage, trash man. Oh, yeah. You said your mom passed away, huh?

Uh-huh. Wow, that's a shame. Was it from shame? It was from shame because of your procrastination. Because your child is such a procre- Oh, honestly, you make me sick. Get out of here. Get out of this. Wow.

That's some real gaslighty shit. It is some really gaslighty shit. Yeah. Trump uses the term set the hook to describe the purpose of those free previews, which we're again, build as actual informative sessions for people interested in real estate. Set the hook because you're catching prey. Prey, that you're killing. Right.

And you'll devour everything. That you eat and destroy. Take every bit of value you can out of it. Well, excrete it. Leave only the bones and pick your teeth with the bones. Now, teachers were directed to pretend they knew Donald Trump in order to make, to better make the case that students should listen to them. Here's time.

I remember one time Mr. Trump had us over for dinner, the script read, after which the instructor recounted how Trump had confided some nugget of real estate wisdom to him. No, I didn't have dinner with him, conceded Gerald Martin when questioned in a 2013 deposition about a recorded presentation in which he mouths the script's dinner with Trump line. I was just trying to be as close to the script as possible. Wow. Oh, man, that's my favorite kind of bullshit, too. It's the best it says.

You know, I don't know, have you, you ever had a steak dinner before? Okay, great. So I was just actually with Donald Trump and at his house, I mean, obviously this man is only going to eat the finest steaks. And when I was there, he brought out this beef, it's from Japan. It's called Kobe beef. Now, you know Kobe Bryant, yeah, he's named after this because the beef is so good. Now it is, it's a kind of beef that melts in your mouth.

And I'm not saying that to impress you. I'm saying that to impress upon you that I actually have, from my personal relationship with Donald Trump, learned the kinds of skills, techniques, strategies to be eating that kind of meal as if it were an afterthought, as if it were your, I don't know, hot pocket based on your body type that I'm looking at. See, there needs to be like a government registry for people who can do what you do. Where do we just keep tabs on them? Just fast talkers, baby.

It's just weird. I'm too empathetic like to like actually fucking, yeah, but I love this. This is safe. Have you ever seen the documentary Marjo? No. It's a, it's a documentary about this kid who was like, his parents made him be a preacher. This is like in like the thirties and forties when he was like starting at like age five. So he was like marrying people as a six year old.

There's video of some of this. And as an adult, like he couldn't do anything else, but this his whole life. So as an adult, after his parents abandoned him, he got back into basically conning people out of money as a preacher and these like big revivals that were happening all the way across the South. And he felt bad about it because he had a soul. And so he took a documentary film crew in with him and like the seventies to record behind the scenes what happens in all these scam revivals.

It's an incredible movie. Wow. It's an incredible movie, but he's got this ability to just like turn that on and start going right into these, these beautiful like, like evangelical rants and it's the same sort of thing. Like it's just amazing to watch. Wow. You know, the impress you.

I'm not here to impress you or impress upon you. Yeah. That's a Tony Robbins line. Oh yeah. That sounds like a Tony Robbins line. Good on you. The thing is that he's like, and you know, I've got, he literally said some shit is like, and now I've got a Rolex and he's like, and I don't say that to impress you.

I say that to impress upon him like, oh, wow, slick fucking line. That is a good, that it's not an unskilled job. No, not at all. I will say that. Especially when you have lines like that that you're like, whoa, like, okay, all right. All right. Weird flex, but okay. You deserve something for that.

Oh, yes, oh man, shit, the time quote even continues because they asked Donald Trump about the guy's dinner story and he said, I don't know who you're talking about, but I will tell you that I met many of the professors and I also studied just about all of the resumes. I'm very much into academics, you know, I was a good student, dude. I met the professors. I met the professors. What the fuck are you talking about? These are the maniacs who are just lying through their teeth.

The president, the president, the training was in fact bullshit. What training there was that wasn't just upselling people. Since most instructors had either no real estate experience or were failed real estate investors who'd gone bankrupt in the field, they weren't exactly filled with good advice to begin with. Stephen Gilpin, who was an actual real estate expert, although that's a pretty scammy field inherently, but he actually had like certifications and stuff and had done this for years. But you said he had gone bankrupt?

No, no, no. I don't know him. Like, his company stopped doing as well because the market started to crash, so he was like, well, this is guaranteed money. Gotcha, guys. Okay. Yeah. So Stephen Gilpin, since he actually knew something about real estate and the laws surrounding

it, was ground zero for witnessing the kind of noxious nonsense that was spouted at these seminars. Quote, one day I got an incoming call from a student. Let's call him Sunil. He said, I'm here at the department. That's specific. Well, I mean, I'm going to guess a lot of people who were recent immigrants to the country and had managed to save up some money, got involved in this sort of thing.

Like, let's call him Sunil. Like, I would hate for the guy's name to be Anil. Yeah, Anil. He's just like, let's call him. To be honest, from what I can tell about Gilpin, that might have been. Right. Let's call him Mr. X. Yeah, let's call him Mr. X.

He said, I'm here at the department of records and deeds trying to file documents and they won't accept my paperwork. Okay. I said, what are you trying to do? I'm filing an affidavit to cloud a title, said Sunil, and they won't take it. Now, clouding a title is a real estate term. It basically means, it refers to an irregularity in the chain of title of real estate property. It's one of those things you can do in some time.

It makes it hard for another buyer to go after the title essentially like that. I don't entirely understand it, but it's a kind of shady thing that is legal in some states. Yeah. Well, let me tell you something, Robert. It is legal. I do have experience with that. It's actually how, I don't know if you've seen, this is an Audemars Piaget wristwatch

I wear. Of course you know the name of a nice wristwatch. Okay. So, once he hears that this guy is trying to cloud a title, the first thing that Stephen Gilpin's head is like, he starts thinking through the states he knows where it's illegal to do this, to try to see if that's what's happening. I noticed the 480 area code of his call, Phoenix, Arizona. You've made a mistake, I've said.

What you're trying to do can't be done in the state of Arizona. It's illegal. But this is what our mentor told us to do. He said, wait, what? I said, where did you learn this? At the Trump University Retreat in Scottsdale. This kid had paid $5,000 to get a step-by-step advice to do something that was illegal in the state that he was trying to do it in.

Since he went ahead and signed the illegal document before being reported, he had technically committed a crime, one that could have resulted in a $10,000 fine in a year of jail time. Oh, wow. Wow. So when you get right down to it, Trump University wasn't just a con, it was a shockingly bad and unspeakably lazing con. And it's about to get shocker, lazier, and somehow even grosser. When we return on Thursday, we'll talk about the kind of human beings who worked as teachers

at Trump University. We'll talk about the downfall of Trump University, and we'll talk about what it taught our president to be about the magic of conning people out of money. Miles, plugables. Plugables. Glade plugins. Love them. And also, you know, I co-host the Daily Zeitgeist on this network.

Daily news and politics and culture, comedy, you know, have some laughs. Talk about the news. Laughs. Yeah. Think, learn. Yeah. Love. Love.

But you won't hear the kind of slick sales shit I do here. This is exclusive for Behind the Bastards. I appreciate it. And yeah, follow me on, you know, social media, Twitter, Instagram, at MylesofGray, G-R-A-Y, M-I-L-E-S. So, enjoy this world exclusive of Myles trying to sell you con stuff, and enjoy our episode on Thursday when we return with the rest of the story of Trump University. You can find us online at BehindTheBastards.com, you can find us on Instagram and Twitter at

At BastardsPod, you can buy a shirt, you could also buy my real estate investment guide, investing with Robert. I wrote it all myself. Now, I've never invested in real estate, and in fact, one year I lost tens of thousands of dollars by renting a, what was essentially a mansion for no good reason. So yeah. Weird flex. Yeah.

But okay. Not a flex. Almost, almost made me homeless. So. Hey, but you had tens of thousands of dollars, man. Yeah. That bit of info was there. Do you call that?

Oflex. Yeah. I invested the money I made from my book in living in a giant house and going to Iraq three times. Wow. Two great investments. It's called living your best life, Robert. So if you want to buy my book of real estate secrets, it's $44.95, investing with Robert.

$4,495. And I promise you less than 40% of what is in the book is illegal in your state. Oh, great. It's not valid in Arizona, New York, New Mexico, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Michigan. And the rest of the Eastern Seaboard. The rest of the Eastern Seaboard. Also Atlanta. Just Atlanta.

Also Louisiana. Oh, just Atlanta. The city of Atlanta. Just Atlanta. Rest of Georgia, you're fine. You're fine. All right. This has been behind the bastards.

I've been Robert Evans. Hug a cat. Alpha Bet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure, he was trying

to get it to happen. Listen to Alpha Bet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about

a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space, with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Back in 1999, a young woman from South Carolina vanished. Seven years passed. She was presumed dead.

Then, a tip came in. He said, I think I found your girl, and she's alive, she's in New York, and I said, really? The detective on the case, he didn't buy it. He came to believe that he was dealing with an imposter. Who was this woman, really? Listen to Deep Cover on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.