Chris Matthews says Trump smart to target Harvard and elite universities over antisemitism: He knows what hes doing

Former MSNBC host Chris Matthews suggested on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s administration was “smart” to target Harvard, and elite universities in general, over antisemitism.“I have to say that the administration sometimes sets its targets in the right direction.The elite universities in this country are not exactly covered in roses right now in the way that they handled these demonstrations,” Matthews said during MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” referring to anti-Israel protests on campuses across the country in the wake of the October 7, 2023, attack on the Jewish state by Hamas.The Trump administration announced it would be freezing $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and contracts on Monday after Harvard University president Alan M.

Garber announced the same day that the school would not be complying with the Trump administration’s demands to combat antisemitism.“I think everybody, whether you’re a Jewish student or not, I think you want to have a right to go to a class when you’re paying $90,000 a year in tuition, you have a right to go to the class and be taught by your professors and to enjoy the rights of a better university, a good university,” Matthews continued. “And the fact that they had to be told to do this, they had to be told to let students go to school, which is what this is about, that they had to be told to do, that they had a problem in their own heads.So I think the elite universities are taking a beating right now.

It’s probably a smart move,” he added.Matthews also argued that it would not hurt the president politically.“It’s Trump going after the elites.He knows what he’s doing, politically, it’s not going to hurt him.

I think these universities have enough money to cover their legacies.They’ve got a lot of money to handle it.

So they’re going to be able to take care of themselves.I don’t want to be loose about this, but I think Trump targeting these universities is probably not the worst mov...