WILDWOOD, New Jersey — Former President Donald Trump called on President Joe Biden to return all the donations he has allegedly received from those who have financed the anti-Israel campus protests that have rapidly spread around the country since April.
At his largest rally to date, addressing a beach crowd of over 100,000 people Saturday in Wildwood, New Jersey, Trump claimed that the same people who are funding the “violent campus uprisings” are also funding Biden’s campaign.
“Tonight, I’m officially calling on Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee to return the donations of all antisemites, American haters, and financiers of chaos who have funded the chaos on our campuses,” Trump said. “Return the money, Joe.”
Trump said he will take a much stronger approach than Biden has taken on the anti-Israel protesters.
“When I’m president, we will not allow our colleges to be taken over by violent radicals,” he declared. The presumptive GOP presidential nominee said protesters who come from other countries and “try to bring jihadism or anti-Americanism or antisemitism to our campuses” will be immediately deported.
He also criticized Biden for announcing he would withhold weapons from Israel as America’s Middle Eastern ally fights to eradicate Hamas terrorists. He called Biden’s announcement “one of the worst betrayals of an American ally in the history of our country.”
“I support Israel’s right to win its war on terror,” Trump said. “Is that okay? I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s good or bad politically. I don’t care. You’ve got to do what’s right. It was a terrible attack. Oct. 7 was a terrible attack.”
The former president told the crowd that Hamas’s attack on Israel, which killed upwards of 1,200 Israelis while over 250 others were taken hostage, including several Americans, and resulted in a war that has killed thousands of civilians in Gaza so far, would have never happened on his watch.
“There would not have even been a chance,” he said.
Wildwood Mayor Ernie Troiano Jr. spoke to the Washington Examiner about the protests happening on campuses, including at Rutgers University in New Jersey, which he said has an “enormous Jewish community.” The Garden State has the second-highest percentage of Jews in the nation, second only to New York.
He criticized the schools for “allowing these people to go to the campuses and create this ill will to the Jewish community.”
People at colleges and universities around the country have reported an uptick in antisemitic conduct following Columbia President Minouche Shafik’s April 17 House testimony, which already followed a massive increase in such conduct following the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, leading to Jewish students by and large feeling unsafe on campus.
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As anti-Israel protesters have taken over parts of many campuses around the country through encampments, demonstrations, and building occupations, there have been several examples of physical assaults and numerous examples of verbal harassment against Jewish students on campus. This has led Jewish and Israeli organizations to file civil rights complaints against the schools for allowing a hostile environment that impedes Jewish students’ right to an equal education.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the White House for comment.
