Donald Trump has told a group of wealthy donors that he will crack down on pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses when he returns to the White House.
The former president and presumptive Republican nominee called the demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza part of a “radical revolution” and promised predominantly Jewish donors that he would set the movement back 25 or 30 years if they helped him defeat Joe Biden at the November presidential elections. .
“If you get me re-elected, we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years,” Trump responded, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the event.
Trump also said his administration would expel any foreign students who participate in the protests, which have recently taken the form of tent camps at colleges across the US.
During his speech at the rally in New York on May 14, Trump heard a donor complain that many of the students and academics who participated in the protests could hold positions of power in the US in the future.
He praised the New York Police Department for clearing the encampments at Columbia University and said the approach should be emulated by other cities, adding: “It must be stopped now.”
Republicans have increasingly sought to turn the campus protests into an election issue, portraying them as a manifestation of “chaos” raging unchecked on Biden’s watch.
Republicans in Congress have held a series of hearings on Capitol Hill to highlight the trend, focusing on reports of anti-Semitism among protesters and citing multiple failures by college presidents to combat it.
At the latest hearing last week, Republican members of the Education and Workforce Committee attacked the presidents of Northwestern and Rutgers universities for negotiating the voluntary dismantling of the encampments instead of seeking help from law enforcement, as Trump did advocated.
In further remarks to donors, after months of equivocation, Trump made an apparent reversal of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, saying he supports the country’s right to continue its “war on terror.”
He has previously said that Israel is “losing the PR war” with its actions in Gaza. So far, more than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in an operation originally launched in retaliation for Hamas’ murderous attack last October, which resulted in around 1,200 Israelis being killed and another 253 taken hostage.
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In March, Trump told the mass-market newspaper Israel Hayom: “You have to end your war… You have to get it done.” He also said that Israel must “return to peace and stop killing people.”
During his donor meeting – which he joked was attended by “98% of my Jewish friends” – Trump reportedly did not mention the name of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, whom he blames for skewing Biden’s victory in the has acknowledged and not spoken about the 2020 elections. until since.
But he boasted of his policies toward Israel, namely the decision to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the recognition of Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, which Israel took from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War.
