Donald Trump erupted on Truth Social after author Michael Wolff claimed his attacks on Harvard are personal — because he didn’t get accepted.
Wolff made the claim on The Daily Beast Podcast last week, saying Trump is targeting the Ivy League school out of a “grudge.”
“He needs an enemy,” Wolff said. “That’s what makes the show great. The Trump show. He picks fantastic enemies, actually. And Harvard, for all it represents, fits right into the Trump show.”
Wolff added, “Going after Harvard has proved to be an incredibly reliable headline. So he’s on the money. So he’s done what he set out to do. Dominate headlines.”
Trump blasted the claim with a fiery post.
“Michael Wolff, a Third Rate Reporter, who is laughed at even by the scoundrels of the Fake News, recently stated that the only reason I’m ‘beating up’ on Harvard, is because I applied there, and didn’t get in,” Trump wrote.
“That story is totally FALSE, I never applied to Harvard,” he continued. “I graduated from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania. He is upset because his book about me was a total ‘BOMB.’ Nobody wanted it, because his ‘reporting’ and reputation is so bad!”
Trump has made Harvard a political target. He’s frozen federal funds, threatened the school’s tax-exempt status, and tried to block it from enrolling international students. He claims it’s about liberal bias and antisemitism — not personal revenge.
But Wolff isn’t the only one raising eyebrows. Trump’s path to Wharton wasn’t exactly smooth. He started at Fordham University in 1964 and transferred to Penn two years later.
His late sister, federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry, once told their niece Mary Trump that she “drove him around New York City to try to get him into college.” She also said “he got into University of Pennsylvania because he had somebody take his exams.” The man accused of taking the test, Joe Shapiro, denied it — and after his death, his widow did too.
The Washington Post reported in 2019 that Trump’s father and brother pulled strings to help him get in.
Trump has repeatedly claimed he graduated “first in his class” at Wharton, calling it “the hardest school to get into.” Records don’t back that up.
Trump and Wolff have been sparring for years. Wolff wrote Fire and Fury and Siege, both scathing accounts of Trump’s time in office. In February, Trump trashed Wolff’s latest book All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America as a “total FAKE JOB.”
“He called me many times trying to set up a meeting, but I never called him back because I didn’t want to give him the credibility of an interview,” Trump posted.
The Harvard rumors picked up steam again when Wolff floated another version — that the real reason behind Trump’s attacks was that his son, Barron, got rejected. That claim got shut down fast.
Melania Trump’s office responded last week: “The claim that Barron applied to Harvard is completely false.”
Barron just wrapped up his first year at NYU’s Stern School of Business.
Watch Wolff’s commentary in the video below:
