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Trump hails ‘beautiful’ arrests of Hamas supporters at Columbia

Donald Trump praises “New York’s finest” for clearing encampment, retaking occupied building from anti-Israel protesters at Columbia University campus.

By World Israel News Staff

Former president Donald Trump offered strong praise for the New York City Police Department, after officers raided a building on the Columbia University campus which was illegally occupied by anti-Israel students, resulting in hundreds of arrests.

“New York was under siege last night,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, adding that the students and pro-Palestinian activists who broke into the building and briefly held a facilities worker hostage were “raging lunatics and Hamas sympathizers.”

Trump said that the police had acted bravely by retaking the Hamilton Hall building and clearing protesters from an illegal pro-Palestinian encampment on the site.

“The police came in and in exactly two hours everything was over,” Trump said. “They went in – they knocked it out – and they were incredible. They did a great job.”

He added that the police at work were “a beautiful thing to watch, New York’s finest.”

Trump called on other universities to follow Columbia’s lead and let law enforcement remove anti-Israel mobs from their institutions.

“I say remove the encampments immediately, vanquish the radicals and take back our campuses for all of the normal students who want a safe place from which to learn,” Trump said.

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In an earlier media interview, Trump shared his suspicions that many of those present in the building and in the encampment were not students enrolled at Columbia.

Rather, Trump said, they appeared to be external assets that were being financially compensated for sowing chaos on campus.

“I really think you have a lot of paid agitators, professional agitators in here too, and I see it all over,” Trump told Fox News on Tuesday.

“You know, when you see signs and they’re all identical, that means they’re being paid by a source.”