Trump Warns Grads About 'Trophy Wives' In West Point Speech

Pollster Frank Luntz breaks down Trump's recent rhetoric as the president spoke to Military Academy graduates at West Point and at a Memorial Day honoring fallen soldiers over the weekend.

President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to divert billions in grant dollars away from Harvard University and give those funds to trade schools across the US, escalating his clash with the elite institution.

“I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land,” Trump said in a post on social media. “What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!”

Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration has already moved to freeze funding and block Harvard’s ability to enroll international students in an intensifying battle over what the president has cast as a failure by the Ivy League university and others to crack down on antisemitism. Harvard is the oldest and richest US university with a $53 billion endowment.

Administration officials have been using that rationale to pressure schools to institute wide policy changes that university officials say infringe on free speech and their academic missions. Harvard has been front and center in Trump’s campaign, with the administration already suspending more than $2.6 billion in federal research money and saying the school won’t be able to receive new funding.

The government had demanded a series of changes as a condition of continuing its financial relationship with the university: It has to remake its governance, transform admissions and faculty hiring, which the administration has called discriminatory, as well as stop admitting international students who officials say are hostile to American values.

The administration has also said that Harvard should ensure more diverse viewpoints on a campus that it says leans too liberal. Harvard sued in April. The government has also moved to bar Harvard from enrolling foreign students, but the university won a temporary court order blocking the government from enforcing that ban.

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