On Friday’s broadcast of PBS’s “Washington Week,” Washington Post Chief Correspondent Dan Balz stated that the Trump administration stopping $400 million in grants and funds to Columbia University “is retribution and some measure of revenge against the people that he thinks did him wrong over the last four years” by President Donald Trump.
Host Franklin Foer asked, “Donald Trump signed an executive order stripping lawyers at the firm Perkins Coie — which had represented Hillary Clinton in 2016 — of their security clearances and other privileges, which follows a similar executive order which he signed stripping those same privileges of Covington and Burling, who’d worked pro bono with Jack Smith. Then, earlier today, the administration stopped a huge number of grants and funds that were going to Columbia University to punish them. Dan, I just want — just, what’s the pattern? What are we seeing when we see all of these things lined up together?”
Balz answered, “Well, we are seeing what he promised, which is retribution and some measure of revenge against the people that he thinks did him wrong over the last four years. They’ve been quite systematic about that. They’ve done it through the whole Justice Department, in a variety of ways. And now they’ve broadened it out into the private sector, if you will, and into the universities. I don’t think there’s any doubt that Columbia is not the last university that’s going to see funds stripped from them. I think many, particularly elite universities, feel that they are on notice. He’s done things to try to rein in the press or to target the press, as we know, particularly the things that have gone on with the press pool. And all of this is part of his effort to dominate everything about the federal government and to accrue as much power in his hands as he can.”
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