Donald Trump on Tuesday lamented the possibility that Columbia University's pro-Palestinian protesters could be treated more leniently than the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, marking the second time in a week the former president has invoked the ongoing campus protests to downplay past examples of right-wing violence.
Trump's remarks demonstrate anew how he and the Republican Party have tried to minimize the deadliest assault on the seat of American power in over 200 years.
Trump has called the Jan. 6 rioters "unbelievable patriots" and has talked openly about the prospect of issuing pardons if he wins a second term, including this week.
"They took over a building. That is a big deal," Trump said of the Columbia protesters. "And I wonder if what's going to happen to them will be anything comparable to what happened to J6, because they're doing a lot of destruction, a lot of damages, a lot of people getting hurt very badly. I wonder if that's going to be the same kind of treatment they gave J6."
Last week, Trump claimed the deadly 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Va., where torch-wielding white supremacists chanted "Jews will not replace us" was "nothing" compared to the antisemitism displayed at the current campus protests.
Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary for George W. Bush, echoed that assertion on Tuesday night.
"The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville was reprehensible. But it ended in two days," Fleischer posted on X. "What's happening now on college campuses is worse. It's been happening for weeks with no end in sight. It's based on hatred toward Jews and America."
The Jan. 6 comparison
More than 1,350 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. More than 800 of them have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from a few days to 22 years. According to the Justice Department, 89 have pleaded guilty to federal felony charges of assaulting law enforcement officers.
Trump encouraged protesters to march to the Capitol on that day, and in the weeks leading up to the riot, fomenting false claims of widespread election fraud he believed tilted the election for Joe Biden. The courts rejected dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump surrogates, and both his attorney general and a cybersecurity unit in the Department of Homeland Security rejected the idea there had been widespread fraud or any vote manipulation.
College students have gathered in encampments on Columbia and at other American campuses to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and demand their universities cut financial ties to Israel. It is estimated that over 1,200 people have been arrested nationwide, but many of the charges have been for trespassing, and it's not clear that they will all be prosecuted.
"The Columbia protests are not aimed at stopping the peaceful transition of power following an election, so they do not threaten the functioning of U.S. democracy," said Richard Hasen, professor at the law school of UCLA, where protesters and counter-protesters clashed Tuesday night before a heavy police presence was summoned by school administrators.
On Jan. 6, 2021, a Trump-supporting protester was fatally shot inside the Capitol, while several police officers were violently assaulted.
The campus protests have pitted students against one another, and videos have shown some instances of demonstrators making antisemitic remarks and violent threats. Some Jewish students say the hateful rhetoric has made them fear their safety on campus.
Protesters in some parts of the country have hurled water bottles or other objects at officers, and police have deployed chemical agents to disperse crowds or carried them away amid screams.
But as of Wednesday, there had been relatively few reports nationally of hospitalizations resulting from serious physical injuries arising from campus protests. An Illinois professor who was hospitalized said he was injured not by protesters, but in an overzealous police officer response.
Hakeem Jefferson, an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University, said the demonstrations at a Columbia building — also occupied during 1960s protests — reflect a long tradition of college students "pushing on the conscience" of their country.
"Disruptive, to be sure. Annoying to university administrators, to be sure," Jefferson said. "To the contrary, what happened on January the 6th was a violent attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. There is no tradition of that in American history. It is unprecedented."
The Charlottesville comparison
Hundreds of white nationalists descended on Virginia on Aug. 11, 2017. Clashes between white nationalists and anti-racism protesters broke out that day and the next. After a police order to disperse, a white supremacist rammed his car into a crowd, killing Heather Heyer. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Dozens of other people were injured over the weekend, and multiple men including white supremacists were sentenced to prison after DeAndre Harris, a Black man, was badly beaten in Charlottesville parking garage.
The rally was a seminal moment for the Trump presidency, and his controversial remarks days later were cited by Biden as a key reason he decided to challenge Trump in the 2020 election.
But last week, Trump opined that "Charlottesville is peanuts compared to what you're looking at now," with the campus protests.
The Biden administration quickly condemned those comments.
"Minimizing the antisemitic and white supremacist poison displayed in Charlottesville is repugnant and divisive," White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said.
Trump's comments come as he runs to reclaim the White House while juggling charges in four separate criminal cases. He has also been accused of antisemitism himself, feigning ignorance after dining with an antisemitic web producer while accusing Jewish Americans who support the Democratic Party of disloyalty to Israel.
Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, have seized on the campus issue. Several House committees will be tasked with a wide probe, the party announced Tuesday, one that ultimately threatens to withhold federal research grants and other government support to the universities.
Weeks after Hamas led the deadly Oct. 7 assault on southern Israeli communities, Republicans lambasted three university presidents who struggled to answer pointed questions at a congressional hearing about whether "calling for the genocide of Jews" would violate school codes of conduct. The presidents of Harvard and Penn resigned in the wake of that December hearing, and in recent days, top Republicans have also called for the ouster of Columbia's president.
