On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) stated that “Columbia didn’t do enough” to combat antisemitism but the Trump administration cutting off $400 million in funding to the school “is outrageous. It’s just aimed at the universities. If you have some instance where someone didn’t do something about antisemitism and should have, go after that person or that group, but this is aimed at hurting universities, and I think it’s spreading and I think it’s very, very wrong.”
Host Chris Hayes asked, “Do you think this is a good faith attempt to deal with antisemitism?”
Schumer answered, “No, absolutely not. Look, let’s start, Columbia didn’t do enough, especially in the early days, to go after antisemitism. I spoke — I’ve spoken to Jewish students there who were vilified and even hit and hurt. And they didn’t do enough. Having said that, what Trump does is he takes this blunderbuss, he just takes $400 million. We don’t know why, where, when, who. Probably a lot of that 400 million goes to cancer research or Alzheimer’s research like this at Columbia Presbyterian. A lot of it may go to helping educate students, and it’ll hurt the 98% of students who never protested, even the Jewish students who might have been picked on. So, this is outrageous. It’s just aimed at the universities. If you have some instance where someone didn’t do something about antisemitism and should have, go after that person or that group, but this is aimed at hurting universities, and I think it’s spreading and I think it’s very, very wrong.”
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