'Totally false!' Trump fury sparked by rumors of Harvard grudge origins

President Donald Trump lashed out at one of his biographers after the writer claimed an escalating feud with Harvard University was based on a personal grudge.

Author Michael Wolff, who has written several books about the inner workings of the White House under Trump, claimed the president has brought his executive powers to bear on the Ivy League school because he was not accepted there as a student decades ago. Trump angrily denied his account.

"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 posted Monday evening on Truth Social. "That story is totally FALSE, I never applied to Harvard. 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,'" Trump added. "Nobody wanted it, because his 'reporting' and reputation is so bad!"

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Trump attacked Wolff back in February, when his latest book, "All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America," was released, calling it a “total FAKE JOB, just like the other JUNK he wrote," and said he had repeatedly rebuffed his invitations for an interview.

Wolff said last week that there's a running joke going around the White House that the president has targeted the Ivy League school because his son Barron didn't get in, which Melania Trump publicly denied, but the author said that it was Trump himself who was shut out as an applicant.

“It’s important not to lend too much calculation and planning to anything he does,” Wolff told The Daily Beast Podcast. “But the other thing is that, by the way, he didn’t get into Harvard. So one of the Trump things is always holding a grudge against the Ivy Leagues.”