“I love the poorly educated,” then-candidate Donald Trump declared back in 2016 while flanked by his two eldest sons. In response, Eric Trump turned toward his father and beamed. He felt seen.
But not everyone who craves Trump’s approval can convincingly rebrand themselves as “poorly-educated.” Many of the GOP politicians eager to serve as vice president hold degrees from elite universities, creating a sad spectacle as they try to distance themselves from their Ivy League pasts, dragging down their dreams of a bright future.
Trump himself graduated from an Ivy League school, and happily boasts about his 1968 B.S. degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The UPenn student newspaper even calculated that Trump trumpeted his Wharton affiliation 93 times between May 16, 2015 and January 17, 2018.
Still, nobody would ever accuse Trump of being well-educated. He may have slithered through Wharton by the alligator skin of his father’s wallet, but his anti-intellectual bona fides are strong. According to Trump, you don’t need to know anything to be smart…just don’t pay taxes.
It’s harder for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) to pass himself off as a dum-dum since he graduated magna cum laude from Yale in 2001, then headed to Harvard Law School where he received his J.D., also with honors (but only cum laude this time so he was moving in the right direction).
Still, DeSantis wanted to distance himself from elites so much that he wholly redefined the concept in his book, The Courage to Be Free. Elites are identified by their desire to subjugate others, he wrote, adding, “The word ‘elite’ does not signify someone of tremendous aptitude, great wealth or major achievement.”
Who wants to tell DeSantis that Trump said the exact opposite in 2018 when he told a Minnesota crowd, “You ever notice they always call the other side ‘the elite’?… Why are they elite? I have a much better apartment than they do. I’m smarter than they are. I’m richer than they are. I became president and they didn’t.”
Sen. James David (J.D.) Vance (R-OH) received his undergraduate degree from the unpretentious Ohio State University, but later J.D. earned a J.D. from Yale, where he served as editor of the Yale Law Journal. As a law student, Vance was encouraged by memoirist Amy Chua to write his own memoir—and his Hillbilly Elegy wound up at #1 on the ultra-elitist New York Times bestseller list.
Vance’s wife—the would-be second lady of the United States—has credentials that are equally impressive. Usha Chilukuri Vance has a Philosophy degree from Cambridge University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. In 2016, her husband said, “Elites use different words, eat different foods, listen to different music—I was astonished when I learned that people listened to classical music for pleasure…” This must have made for awkward dinner conversation, as Usha is currently a board member of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
Another potential Trump second banana, Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND), graduated from North Dakota State University—decidedly not elite—before earning his MBA from Stanford University—decidedly elite. Burgum started a software company that he later sold to Microsoft for $1.1 billion, making him the richest of the VP contenders.
But don’t mistake Burgum as part of the privileged class. When he ran for president in 2023, Burgum received support from Transformers actor Josh Duhamel who posted, “I can’t think of anyone better than him to be our president. True man of the people!” And Duhamel knows all about the people. He even represented them as “the face of North Dakota.” His two-year contract from 2020-2021 reportedly paid him $87,500 a year in taxpayer funds—more than double the $40,748 per capita income of a North Dakota resident around the same time.
And then there’s Trump fanatic Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who confusingly bragged about being a Harvard alum while attacking the institution for spewing hate. And she did it all with ease on her constituent page.
Stefanik received her B.A. from Harvard in 2006 and remained affiliated with Harvard’s Institute of Politics until 2021 when the Dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School asked her to step aside from the Senior Advisory Committee, writing: “My request was not about political parties, political ideology, or her choice of candidate for president. Rather, in my assessment, Elise has made public assertions about voter fraud in November’s presidential election that have no basis in evidence…”
Sometimes you distance yourself from your alma mater. And sometimes your alma mater distances itself from you.
It’s a conundrum for the MAGA GOP—the need to flex about one’s superiority while positioning as a populist. Stefanik went from highlighting her Harvard pedigree in her early campaign ads to biting the brand that feeds her.
Should one of these lettered candidates grab the VP slot, they’ll probably only whisper of their fancy educational accomplishments in university clubs where the hoi polloi isn’t allowed. Meanwhile, in public, when they’re tossing books on the bonfire, they may chuck their prestigious diplomas on there, too.
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