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Donald Trump is trying to turn the lawsuits against Trump University into a rationale for his candidacy. And he's not above naming the former students who have criticized him in order to do it.
In a three-minute video, Trump takes on two former students who made videos for the conservative American Future Fund saying they were "duped by the Donald":
"All it did was ruin my credit and ruin my life," one student said:
The students, known in the videos as "Kevin," "Scott," and "Sherry," later gave their full names to the Washington Post. Trump displays their full names on his video as he goes through the positive evaluations he says they filled out after attending a Trump University seminar, and says he's looking for an evaluation from the third student, Sherry.
Then Trump puts the most Trumpian spin on the lawsuit: He says he could easily settle it, given the students' positive survey evaluations. But he won't settle it, because Donald Trump doesn't settle.
"I don't like to settle," Trump says. "When I'm right about something, I want to go to court. … The United States should fight back also. We shouldn't be settlers."
This might seem like a stretch. Trump is facing two class-action lawsuits and a fraud lawsuit from the state of New York. But he is just doing the same thing he did when he turned his record of greed into a rationale for his campaign.
"My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy," he said before the Iowa caucuses. "I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States."
Now Trump is asserting he isn't a fraudster – he's a guy who doesn't settle, and he doesn't think the United States should settle, either.
