Sure Trump's wrong, but what about Obama? Maybe? Possibly?
Conservative media grasp at straws to normalize an abnormal president – even when calling him out
Ray Hartmann
May 29, 2025
“So two Corinthians walk into a bar…”
Remember all the fun we had in 2016 when then-presidential candidate Donald Trump committed a faux pas for the ages in a speech attempting to pander to evangelicals at Liberty University? Lots of jokes ensued from these words by Trump:
“Two Corinthians, 3:17, that’s the whole ballgame. ‘Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’”
The whole ballgame, eh? Back then, it was still legal to laugh out loud at Trump, and the bemused students were practically rolling in the aisles over hearing this TV guy refer to the Bible’s Second Corinthians as “Two Corinthians.”
It was like going to the ballgame and hearing someone yell, “block that kick!” Everyone got a nice laugh out of it, except Trump.
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Somehow, though, amid all the frivolity of that moment, the media had forgotten to note that another Corinthians reference was—if we believe what we’re being told now—a major scandal at the time. Don’t you remember the brutal takedown of an institution known as Corinthian Colleges by President Barack Obama, who was in office at the time?
OK, you can be forgiven if you don’t—because it didn’t happen that way, and it wasn’t actually a scandal. Well, until now, when Corinthian was dragged back into the news by The Wall Street Journal with a bit of artistic license.
Yesterday, in a stretch greater than the one I just made with the Two Corinthians reference (which is saying something), The Journal recalled Corinthian Colleges in an extraordinary act of revisionist history.
The newspaper’s blistering lead editorial was headlined:
“Is Trump Trying to Destroy Harvard? The order against foreign students turns away the world’s brightest.”
The editorial defended Harvard University against Trump, which took some guts for a conservative outlet in an era of unprecedented media intimidation by an American president. Here’s one key passage:
“The Trump Administration has frozen billions in federal grants to Harvard University, threatened its tax-exempt status, and sought to dictate its curriculum and hiring. Now the government seems bent on destroying the school for the offense of fighting back. And for what purpose?”
But in a troubling sign of our times, the newspaper felt obligated to depart from an otherwise solid piece to mitigate its criticism of Trump by placing it into a fictional context. Here’s more:
“(The Harvard attack) recalls when the Obama Administration cut off student aid to for-profit Corinthian Colleges on the pretext of its alleged dilatory response to sweeping record demands. Thousands of students’ educations were disrupted so the Obama team could wave a political scalp.”
Whoa. Time out.
Corinthian Colleges was just a tad different than Harvard University. Among the many accusations against the college—a for-profit giant—were that it had lied about job placements, targeted vulnerable students with deceptive ads, raked in federal student aid, and left tens of thousands of people buried in debt and betrayed.
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Corinthian Colleges would ultimately go out of business almost a decade ago, having collapsed under the weight of legitimate federal and state investigations and civil lawsuits. It suffered multiple nine-figure court judgments. Its CEO settled a lawsuit from the SEC for sizable fines, along with acceptance of a ban on serving on public boards.
It was arguably one of the most brazen scams in the history of American higher education. And as for being a political scalp, the college and its execs were donors to Democrats and Republicans alike. And while there was some debate over attacking for-profit colleges, no partisans came to its public defense.
That’s why you don’t remember much, if anything, about the government’s legal pursuit of Corinthian Colleges. It was law enforcement, focused on civil misdeeds, and it couldn’t possibly be further from Trump’s assault on Harvard University.
All of which begs the question as to why The Journal would feel the need to sully its journalism—and more importantly, pander to Trump — even while calling him out. The answer, sadly, is that it’s not only the president’s apologists and acolytes who feel the need to concoct precedent for his unprecedented attacks on democracy.
It’s also his critics who must mute their voices so as not to appear disloyal to the leader.
That’s not a political issue, it’s a moral one. Just like it’s written right there in Two Corinthians.
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