Former President Donald Trump promised donors during a private meeting that he would see to the deportation of foreign students involved in pro-Palestinian student protests as he promised a hard-stance against such demonstrations.
Trump promised donors he’d deport pro-Palestinian protesters: Report https://t.co/nFRbT7az0v
— Trump2024_no_matter_what (@TexasTrump2024) May 27, 2024
According to the Washington Post, Trump made this promise during a roundtable event in New York on May 14. “One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave,” he stated.
Calling the demonstrators a part of a “radical revolution,” he further said, “Well, if you get me elected, and you should really be doing this, if you get me reelected, we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years.”
Trump’s promise comes after he has been criticized over his response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war against Hamas.
He recently urged Netanyahu to “get it over with … get back to peace and stop killing people,” a statement that earned him some amount of criticism as Israel tries to root out and defeat the last of the terrorist group that carried out an unprecedented attack on the Jewish nation on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage.
During the roundtable event on May 14, Trump expressed support for Israel’s “war on terror.”
Touting his Middle East foreign policy, he said, “So I did Golan Heights. You know that’s worth $2 trillion, they said, that piece, if you put it in real estate terms. But it’s worth more than that. It is.”
“How can a Jewish person vote for a Democrat and [President Joe] Biden in particular — but forget Biden. They always let you down,” he continued.
Trump’s appeal to donors and the Jewish community was backed by his spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt in a statement to the Washington Examiner this week.
Leavitt vowed that if Trump wins the election and is sworn in, “Israel will once again be protected, Iran will go back to being broke, terrorists will be hunted down, and the bloodshed will end.”
The Biden campaign, however, is trying to throw a wrench into the Republican presidential candidate’s appeal to the Jewish community, as spokesman Charles Lutvak said, “As president, Donald Trump said Neo-Nazi marchers were ‘very fine people.’ Now, like a cuckoo clock of hate, he is popping up every month with the same patronizing antisemitic shtick and reminding Jewish voters that he has no respect for us.”