Before entering the courthouse for another day of his New York criminal trial, former President Donald Trump took some time to address the ongoing anti-Israel protests at universities across the country, blasting President Joe Biden for sending the “wrong” message during the conflict in the Middle East.
Not far from Trump’s hush money trial in lower Manhattan, students at Columbia University on the Upper West Side have engaged in anti-Israel demonstrations that have led to a rabbi for the university warning Jewish students of “extreme antisemitism and anarchy” on campus and suggesting they go home. Columbia moved to remote learning on Monday out of safety concerns and said that classes at its main campus will be hybrid, technology permitting, until the end of the semester, CNN reported.
Anti-Israel protests have also broken out at New York University and Yale, where dozens of demonstrators were arrested, according to The New York Times.
“What’s going on at the colleges — Columbia, NYU, and others — is a disgrace,” Trump told reporters outside the Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday morning. “It’s really on Biden. He’s got the wrong signal, he’s got the wrong tone, he’s got the wrong words. He doesn’t know who he’s backing. And It’s a mess.”
“What’s going on is a disgrace to our country. It’s all Biden’s fault and everybody knows it,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee added. “He’s got no message. He’s got no compassion. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He can’t put two sentences together, frankly. He is the worst president in the history of our country.”
President Biden was asked on Monday if he condemns “the antisemitic protests on college campuses” and replied, “I condemn the antisemitic protests. That’s why I’ve set up a program to deal with that.”
“I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians,” Biden added.
Trump on pro-Palestinian protests at college campuses: "A disgrace" pic.twitter.com/r6VUgYsCRj
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During his remarks to reporters, Trump also repeated his criticism of authorities for preventing any protests outside the courtroom during his trial while allowing anti-Israel protesters to take control of large sections of college campuses.
“It’s interesting [that] outside for great Americans — people that want to come down and they want to protest at the court and they want to protest peacefully — we have more police presence here than anyone’s ever seen. For blocks,” Trump said. “You can’t get near this courthouse, and yet you have nobody up at a college where you have very radical people wanting to rip the colleges down.”
Columbia, a private university, called on the NYPD last week to clear protest encampments on its campus, and NYPD officials said that more than 100 people received summonses for trespassing. The move, however, failed to stop anti-Israel demonstrators from continuing their on-campus sit-in into this week.