The college admissions scandal: finally, a big story which the MSM can't pin to President Trump. But not so fast, my friend! Where there's a will to trash Trump, there's a way.
And so it was that this morning, CNN, with a big assist from New York Times columnist and CNN contributor Frank Bruni, found a way to tie the Trump family to the admissions scandal.
On New Day, Bruni suggested that a donation to Harvard made by Jared Kushner's father was not "morally different" from the crimes committed in the college admissions scandal. Right. Other than the Kushner donation being legal, and the crimes being, uh, crimes.
But hey, for the MSM, any excuse is good to tie Trump to criminality!
If CNN is so scandalized by Kushner getting into Harvard, it should tell us how CNN's own Chris Cuomo, son of former New York Governor Mario, got into Yale. Were his grades and SATs in the top 1-2%, like the vast majority of non-minority Yale applicants admitted on their own merits?
ALISYN CAMEROTA: Let's bring in Frank Bruni, New York Times op-ed columnist and CNN contributor. He also wrote the definitive book on college admissions, "Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be: an antidote to the college admissions mania." Frank, I'm glad you wrote mania, it's official, parents have gone mad as we now saw. I read your piece last night in the New York Times. You're not surprised by this. However, are you surprised by the scope, of just how many people, parents, coaches, college entrance admissions consultants and things like that?
FRANK BRUNI: I'm surprised or instance that they got coaches who were willing to take bribes. I had never seen anything like that before. I mean, this is egregious and this is ugly. But I think the important thing, and this is why I'm not surprised, is that money has long corrupted the college admissions process. We're talking now about uses of money that actually happen to be illegal.
But how morally is it that much different from, say, Jared Kushner's father pledging a donation of $2.5 million as Jared, who did not have good enough grades or test scores, is applying to Harvard, and lo and behold gets in? That sort of thing among the wealthy has happened for decades. I think it's accelerated over recent years as the shine of big colleges has meant more to parents. I think we need to talk about that big picture in addition to this criminality.
