Former President Donald Trump has claimed that “paid agitators” were involved in the recent protests in support of Palestinians at Columbia University in New York City.
Hundreds of New York Police Department (NYPD) officers also removed and arrested students who had been barricading themselves in the Hamilton Hall campus building since the early hours of Tuesday morning.
“I really think you have a lot of paid agitators, professional agitators in here too, and I see it all over,” the presumptive GOP presidential nominee said. “You know, when you see signs and they’re all identical. That means they’re being paid by a source.”
There is no evidence to suggest that paid demonstrators were among the students protesting at Columbia University.
However, President Trump pointed to the hand-painted signs he said were being carried by some of the protesters on the school’s campus in recent weeks as reasoning for his belief that paid actors may have been involved in the demonstrations.
“You know, these aren’t hand-painted signs where people would go to their basement and paint something because they really believed that,” he said. “These are all signs that are identical that made by the same printer and you know, when you see that that means there’s somebody at the top that’s paying, or a group that’s paying, and they’re doing a great disservice to the world, but they’re doing a great disservice to our country.”
President Trump’s comments came shortly after police descended on the Ivy League institution to remove protesters who had failed to comply with the Monday 2 p.m. deadline to disband.
Police Arrests
Students at the university have been protesting for nearly two weeks over the school’s alleged complicit behavior in “Israel’s ongoing genocidal assault on the Gaza strip” for the past several months. They have also called on the university to disclose and divest from any financial ties to Israel.Mr. Chang added that the university believes the group who took over Hamilton Hall—a building near the South Lawn where the office of the dean is located—is “led by individuals who are not affiliated with the University.”
More than 100 students were arrested, according to reports.
Elsewhere, during Tuesday’s interview, President Trump praised NYPD officers for their work to remove the protesters but warned the demonstrations are far from settling down as they continue to spread across the country.
“I think New York City’s finest have been incredible the way they’ve been—it’s not over yet—but the way they walked in and the way they climbed through that window,” President Trump said. “They were not afraid of anything and it looks like they’ve got it maybe clamped down.”
The former U.S. leader also used the opportunity to criticize President Joe Biden, whom he accused of failing to stop “the antisemitism that’s just pervading our country right now.”
“Biden has to do something. Biden is supposed to be the voice of our country, and it’s certainly not much of a voice,” he said.
