During a town hall on CNN on Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) argued that President Donald Trump threatening federal grants to major schools like Harvard and Columbia is authoritarian.
Sanders said, “The idea that the president of the United States would threaten and harass attorneys and law firms that defended people he did not like is a major step forward toward authoritarianism. … [Y]ou’ve got major universities, like Harvard and Columbia, these are some of the great universities in the world, and yet, out of fear of losing their grants — and I understand that, they’ve got a lot of money there — they are willing to change their curriculum to bow down before Trump. You add all of that together, the attack on law firms, you have Trump, for the first time in history, saying to a judge, oh, you ruled against me. I don’t like the decision you rendered, we’re going to impeach you. That’s not America. What our Constitution is about is the separation of power, executive, judiciary, legislative, an independent judiciary. You don’t threaten and intimidate judges because they rule against you. That is a movement toward authoritarianism.”
He added, “Look, what is the function of higher education? What is the function of education in general? It’s to try to pursue the truth. Now, your truth may be different than my truth. But that’s what the function of a higher education is. So, to give — to tell their students, oh, by the way, we’re going to cave into an authoritarian-type president in order to protect our money is a gross mistake and a disservice and a very bad lesson, I think, to teach their students.”
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