His blatant disregard for the truth explained by his upbringing and education.
Shamus Kahn writes in the Washington Post:
“This narrative of the exceptional student rests on a fiction with pathological consequences: Economist Raj Chetty has shown that children whose parents are in the top 1 percent of earners are 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy League school than are the children of poorer parents — meaning that, in cases like this, admission is less about talent and more about coming from the right family. In that way, privilege casts inherited advantages as ‘exceptional’ qualities that justify special treatment. “