Former President Donald Trump blasted the anti-Israel protests erupting across US college campuses as a “radical revolution” and vowed to deport any foreign students involved if he were re-elected, he told donors in New York this month.
“One thing I do is [with] any student that protests — I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students,” Trump told the group during a May 14 roundtable, according to the Washington Post.
“As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave,” the defiant 2024 hopeful added.
During the meeting, at least one of the donors reportedly bemoaned the possibility that one of the student protesters could eventually rise to political power in the future.
But Trump, 77, assured the donors he would fight to end the “radical revolution” on college campuses, declaring it “has to be stopped now,” the Washington Post reported.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt blamed President Biden for empowering the protesters in a statement to The Post Monday.
“Joe Biden has sided with radical leftist Democrats like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib and empowered antisemitic protestors destroying our college campuses and threatening to undermine our democracy,” Leavitt said.
“President Trump will side with Jewish Americans and American citizens, period, and he will not tolerate terrorist sympathizers on our college campuses.”
The 45th president has also publicly vowed to clamp down on anti-Israel protesters. Weeks after the bloody Oct. 7, 2023 surprise Hamas attack that killed some 1,200 Israelis, Trump pledged to deport the “resident aliens” who joined the “pro-jihadist protest.”
“If you hate America, if you want to abolish Israel, if you sympathize with jihadists, then we don’t want you in our country, and you’re not going to be getting into our country,” Trump told the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas back in October.
“I will cancel the student visas of Hamas sympathizers on college campuses and all resident aliens who join in pro-Jihadists protests,” he went on. “Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you.”
Throughout his first term, Trump courted close ties with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He moved the US embassy to Jerusalem and helped broker the Abraham Accords.
After departing the White House, however, the former president began souring on Netanyahu in the public eye. He has complained that Netanyahu “let us down” just before the US killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in 2020.
During a wide-ranging interview with Time magazine published last month, Trump opened up about his beef with Netanyahu and claimed that Israel pulled out of the operation to kill the top Iranian general.
“That was going to be a joint [attack] and all of a sudden, we were told that Israel was not doing it,” he told Time. “And I was not happy about that. That was something I never forgot. And it showed me something.”
President Biden, 81, has also clashed with Netanyahu over concerns that Israel isn’t sufficiently trying to minimize civilian casualties in its war with Hamas.
Meanwhile, Trump has publicly expressed some misgivings about the manner in which Israel has conducted the war against Hamas, contending that the US ally is “absolutely losing the PR war.”
“Every night, they’re releasing tapes of a building falling down. They shouldn’t be releasing tapes like that. They’re doing, that’s why they’re losing the PR war,” Trump vented to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt last month.
“They’ve got to finish what they started, and they’ve got to finish it fast, and we have to get on with life.”
However, despite his reservations with Netanyahu, Trump reportedly told donors at the New York roundtable this month that he intends to back Israel if he returns to the presidency.