To reporters digging in on DeSantis, just want to note a few things in his biography that deserve examination or don't add up.
First, he's a middle class guy who graduated Magna Cum Laude in History from Yale while playing baseball (Division 1). How'd he pay?
There are no sports scholarships in the Ivy League. The Dexter Filkins' New Yorker profile says "he worked several jobs to help pay his tuition". The tuition at Yale in 2000 was $25000. Minimum wage was $6.15 in CT then . Working even full time all year would pay 1/2 that
If he got scholarships or loans it may be inconvenient for the image he likes to present but it would be honest. If his jobs were somehow much higher paying than minimum wage, that is certainly interesting.
The time it takes to graduate magna cum laude, play baseball, and work to pay tuition? There is a story in there I am sure. Maybe
@Josh Marshall is interested?
History majors at Yale are required to write a Senior Essay. Those that won awards are available online. DeSantis did not. What did he write his essay on? Given his ahistorical take on slavery & insistence FL teachers teach real history, this matters.
His biography notes that he served as a JAG with a commission roughly concomitant with his Harvard Law Degree. What it seems to leave out is that this almost certainly paid for his Harvard Law Degree.
I don't begrudge his service, but note that it is convenient to leave out >
that taxpayers through his service picked up the tab for probably about $200K when he is criticizing student loan forgiveness for underprivileged people at the $10K level.
Finally, there is this bit from the Filkins' piece - a baseball teammate at Yale said: โRon is the most selfish person I have ever interacted with. He has always loved embarrassing and humiliating people. Iโm speaking for othersโhe was the biggest dick we knew.โ
That same teammate said: "Heโs so fucking smart and so creative,โ he said. โYou couldnโt even plagiarize off his work. Heโd take some angle, and everyone knew there was only one person who could have done that.โ