Former President Donald Trump lambasted President Joe Biden during a break in his hush money trial outside of a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday for failing to address the mounting anti-Israel violence and protests at Columbia University and elsewhere.
While describing the violent 2017 Charlottesville rally as “peanuts” compared to the unrest on the college campus, the former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee criticized the agitators at Columbia University who have erected large pro-Palestinian encampments on the campus in recent weeks.
However, on Monday night, a sizable crowd of anti-Israel students forcibly entered an academic building—the iconic Hamilton Hall on the Manhattan campus—and barricaded its doors. A university facilities worker reported being held hostage by the protesters. Outside Hamilton Hall, the anti-Israel agitators formed a human barricade by linking their arms, pledging to stay put until the university addresses their three demands.
The students are demanding that the university be more transparent with its investments, provide blanket amnesty to the protesting students for any consequences, and divest from the financial support of Israel, Fox News reported.
“The Biden protests that are going on are horrible — it is all caused by him because he doesn’t speak — he can’t put two sentences together,” Trump said. “He’s got to get out and make a statement because the colleges are being overrun in this country.”
Trump said, “The antisemitism, all of the problems going on, they’re being overrun. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump added.
” [Biden] said he ran because of Charlottesville,” Trump remarked, alluding to the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where violence erupted between White nationalists and counterprotesters. Tragically, a counter-protester lost their life in a car attack during the chaotic scene.
Trump has been criticized for his comments surrounding the incident, particularly his statement that there were good people on “both sides.” Trump, at the time, also blamed “many sides” for the violence.
“Well, if the people that know Charlottesville, when you extend that statement, it’s a big hoax,” Trump said Tuesday. “Charlottesville is peanuts compared to what you’re looking at now,” adding that the entire country is “up in arms.”
“Breaking into colleges, knocking the hell out of Columbia University, I mean — they took over the building. I know the building very well,” Trump said. “They took over a building and that is a big deal.”
“I wonder what’s going to happen to them, or anything comparable to what happened to J6, because they’re doing a lot of destruction, a lot of damage, a lot of people are getting hurt very badly,” Trump said.
