Transcript: Trump’s Unhinged Eruption at Harvard Reveals MAGA Weakness

That is what is going on right now, and it’s impacting not just universities but increasingly a range of institutions, cultural centers like the Kennedy Center. Are we really going to become a country where Trump, as president, is also—I don’t know—the president of Columbia, president of Harvard, and chair of the Kennedy Center? What other titles will emerge? I think it’s very important that Harvard has stood up to it, but it really does reflect this moment.

Sargent: It really does. And Trump raged about this on Truth Social, I think, recognizing that this is a problem for him. He said this, “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’… Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!” John, this is a guy who has absolutely zero conception of the public interest in any sense at all. Can you talk about what this threat to revoke tax-exempt status means? How real is it?

Friedman: I don’t think anybody can say with certainty what is real and what is farce anymore with what’s going on with the federal government. Every day presents new scenarios which were really not contemplated before in terms of checks and balances, the different sources of power between the judiciary and the executive branch. So it remains to be seen what exactly is going to come next. Certainly, the Trump administration has made clear that they want to introduce a new playbook, that they want to play the same hardball and bullying against other countries around the world as they do with universities in the United States like Harvard. And of course, they want to go after Harvard, Princeton, Columbia—some of the best universities in the country, and, really, some of the best universities in the world. That’s what is so especially dangerous in this moment: what is being put in jeopardy in terms of the research and science engines of these institutions ranges way beyond whatever the concerns that are being used to justify them by the government at this point.