Transcript: Trump’s Rage at Harvard Darkens With “Alarming” New Attack
Sachs: Yeah, I don’t think it’s any mistake that he’s picked a high-profile fight. First, obviously, with Columbia, and now with Harvard. He’s trying to send a message to smaller universities that don’t have Harvard’s endowment, its resources, its legal team. And if he can bend Harvard, then the sky’s the limit. He can go after anybody he wants. And you’re right. He’s singled out Harvard. He’s described it as being a hotbed of Marxist brainwashers. He’s described it as pushing political and ideological terrorist-inspired sickness upon people. And the goal, I’m sure, is to browbeat and intimidate Harvard into complying. And if Harvard complies, then every other domino—I’m sure they hope—will fall with every other university.
Sargent: Well, Jeffrey, you’re a shrewd observer of this stuff. You’re pretty plugged into it. What’s the real game plan here? Donald Trump doesn’t have any vision of what he wants universities to do. The idea is preposterous. He has no idea what he’s talking about. He has no idea what goes on at colleges. But there are people in the shadows here who really do have a vision of what they want to happen to higher education in the U.S. They really want to cripple institutions, especially liberal institutions across the country. What do you think’s really at work here? What’s the goal, and how do they see themselves getting there via this thing that Trump’s doing now?
Sachs: Yeah, I think that the key actor here is Stephen Miller, who is the White House deputy chief of staff and also an adviser in DHS. Miller is somebody who believes passionately in the need to retake what he would call “key cultural institutions”: the Smithsonian, public schools, museums, libraries, and, of course, higher education. Miller is somebody who—in his comments and in his writings, both during the first Trump administration and now in the second—feels that if the right can either shatter these cultural institutions or take them over, the political payoff downstream will be enormous. Miller is somebody who I think is probably pushing this more than Trump himself.
