The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 29 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
President Donald Trump’s rage at Harvard University has now taken a truly sadistic and unhinged turn. In a series of rants to reporters, Trump made it clear that only total subjugation to him on Harvard’s part will satisfy him, and total subjugation would require Harvard to basically endorse Trump’s idea that their foreign student body is riddled with “dangerous radicals” and “terrorists.” All this considerably raises the stakes in this fight. We need a new kind of language to capture the true level of demagoguery and malevolence at work here. And if Harvard backs down, the consequences could be very serious. A lot is on the line. Katherine Stewart, a writer who regularly dissects the right wing, has a new piece on her Substack arguing that the assault on Harvard and other universities is better understood as an attack on truth and learning. Katherine, thanks so much for coming on.
Katherine Stewart: It’s great to be here.
Sargent: To catch people up, the Trump administration recently demanded extensive information about Harvard’s foreign student body. Harvard has tried to comply, but Trump says it isn’t good enough. And in retaliation, he revoked Harvard’s ability to receive foreign students. Katherine, let’s start here. The original demand for information about students was itself a grotesque abuse of power. It’s not a demand Harvard could really meet the way Trump claims to want them to. Can you talk about that?
Stewart: Well, the president is targeting a particular institution with illegal and unconstitutional methods to serve a frankly destructive and nihilistic end. This attack on Harvard in particular, and universities more broadly, is really an attack on a source of American strength. The Trump administration doesn’t have a vision for how to improve American education. He’s really only promising to debilitate it. It’s attempting to coerce a cultural and scientific institution to conform to his ideological agenda. It’s a grotesque violation of the First Amendment. The administration is really demanding that Harvard let the MAGA power elite control its hiring of faculty, its curricula, its choice of students. This is exactly the kind of government manipulation of the pursuit of knowledge that autocrats love, and that is antithetical to democracy.
Sargent: Well, let’s listen to Trump speaking to reporters where he put this all out there with remarkable clarity. Listen to this.
Donald Trump (audio voiceover): Harvard has to show us their lists. They have foreign students—about 31 percent of their students are foreign-based, almost 31 percent. We want to know where those students come. Are they troublemakers? What countries do they come [from]? And we’re not going to.… If somebody is coming from a certain country and they’re 100 percent fine, which I hope most of them [are] but many of them won’t be … you’re going to see some very radical people. They’re taking people from areas of the world that are very radicalized. And we don’t want them making trouble in our country.
Sargent: Katherine, this is pure McCarthyism. There’s already a process in place by which the U.S. government monitors foreign students at institutions like Harvard. There are no indications Harvard has violated anything. This seems to raise the stakes, no? Do you fear that Harvard might capitulate here? And if so, wouldn’t it be catastrophic?
Stewart: It would be catastrophic. Look, first of all, a lot of these foreign students pay full fare. And if you get into Harvard and your family doesn’t have a lot of money, these foreign students will subsidize you, essentially. Some students of very limited means actually get a free ride at places like Harvard. In addition, many of these foreign students have exceptional talent, and they’re going to end up contributing to the American economy in some way or contributing to our cultural environment. We have to also think about the fact that the House GOP bill that Trump is pushing is going to slash funding that’s available for hundreds of thousands of students of limited means who frankly can’t afford college without it. So the idea that somehow he’s going to just turn around and offer those spots to deserving American kids is absurd.
The attack on Harvard is really, like everything else this administration does, largely about performance. It’s really aimed at the kind of people who are indoctrinated by far-right media to believe that all the courses that Harvard teaches are about how to do your gender surgery operation or how to be the most woke person in town. And they frankly don’t understand that the money that Harvard gets from the government is not, in fact, a subsidy. It is overwhelmingly funding for research and for services that the government asks for through competitive bidding processes, along with fairly rigorous grant-making processes. A lot of that money is targeting the Chan School, which is the public health arm of Harvard Medical School. And the research coming out of institutions like that [is] helping to have treatments for cancer and other illnesses, but this is an administration that would allow people to die of cancer as long as it “owns the libs.”
Sargent: Well, it strikes me that capitulation here really is not an option, although it might happen, because Harvard is one of the most important educational institutions in the country—the oldest university. And for them to essentially capitulate to this demagoguery about their foreign student body could send a terrible message to the world and to foreign students who are considering coming to the United States in the future, right? If you’re a foreign student abroad who’s thinking of coming here, what do you read into something like that? What do you read into it that the president of the U.S. is saying that you might be a terrorist? And what would be the set of consequences that would unfold if Harvard somehow knuckles under here?
Stewart: Look, the orders that the Trump administration is making against Harvard are very poorly thought out and almost certainly illegal. And we’ve seen time and time again where Trump orders an organization or a person to do something and the court says, No, you can’t do that. But this is really typical of regimes that are headed toward fascism. They break the law out in the open over and over again precisely because they want the people to think that the law simply doesn’t apply anymore. They want people to comply in advance or simply give up, so they have an absolute premium on loyalty to the leader. And that means that the competence, I would say, and expertise with which government functions are carried out just evaporates. Any bad outcomes can be covered with more lies.
Sargent: It’s really alarming. The whole world is watching this happen. The whole world is watching us slide toward fascism, basically. Let’s listen to some more audio of Trump. Here goes.
Trump (audio voiceover): So Harvard has to behave themselves. Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect. And all they’re doing is getting in deeper and deeper and deeper. They’ve got to behave themselves. I’m looking out for the country—and Harvard. I want Harvard to do well. I want Harvard to be great—again. We have to look at the list. And Harvard has to understand the last thing I want to do is hurt them. They’re hurting themselves. They’re fighting. Colombia has been really … they were very, very bad, what they’ve done. They’re very antisemitic and lots of other things, but they’re working with us on finding a solution. And they’re taken off that hot seat. But Harvard wants to fight. They want to show how smart they are. And they’re getting their ass kicked.
Sargent: This is really mob speak, Katherine. Here, Trump is basically saying that there’s no clear way Harvard can satisfy him, which I think is the whole point of the exercise. To the point you made just before, the autocrats’ whim must be a source of fear and uncertainty at all times. You’ve written on this. Can you talk about it?
Stewart: This is of a piece with this administration’s attack on democracy on other fronts. It has declared war on the administrative state, or the institutions of a functioning government, because a functioning government run by rational policymaking processes and subject to ethics, rules, and expertise is a hindrance to dictatorial power. Trump and his people have declared war on science for the same reason. What kind of administration destroys the agencies that handle food safety and approve new medications, or gut the scientific research apparatus that has made America the envy of the world? What kind of administration fires people who handle nuclear codes and imperil air traffic safety processes? The fundamental issue here is that facts and rational inquiry, again, are inimical to dictatorial power. So this administration is engaged in a ceaseless war on the truth.
Sargent: And it’s the whim—this feeling of being on thin ice all the time, never exactly sure what the autocrat’s going to do next—that’s the main event here, right? To create this climate of terror, really, of the autocrat and his ever-shifting sets of demands. Isn’t that the essence of autocracy really at its core?
Stewart: Absolutely. We could just add this to the unprecedented spree of antidemocratic and unconstitutional actions over the past four months. We’ve got executive orders targeting the rights of law firms. We’ve got executive overreach. We’ve got the unprecedented kinds of corruption that we’ve seen in our government. Listen, has there been corruption in the government in the past? Of course there has, but never before have we seen a president monetize the power of the office in the way that Trump has through his meme coins and fancy dinners and social media networks and things like that. It’s basically a pay-to-play administration. No president in the past has given an unelected oligarch like Musk totally an illegal power to maraud through the government, slashing and burning at will; him and his 19- and 22-year-old minions.
The remarkable fact about all the law breaking, frankly, is how little the administration has done to cover its tracks. They really want you to know that they have corrupted the Department of Justice so that they can basically say, We can do it, and we can get away with it. And they’re doing it because that’s what autocrats do. They want us to think the laws don’t apply anymore and all that matters is pleasing Dear Leader.
Sargent: Well, that’s why it’s so critical that a judge just struck down one of Trump’s executive orders, this one seeking to destroy WilmerHale, one of the law firms that Trump has gone after. Again and again, he’s lost in court on this front. Now, a number of law firms have capitulated, but a few of them have stood up and they’ve been winning. And this is a really big deal in the larger context of what you’re talking about here because the very sight of law firms fighting back, of Harvard fighting back, of winning in court, breaks that type of spell that Trump is trying to cast, the one that you’re describing.
Stewart: It’s really important. The courts are slow-rolling this. I saw a statistic and I’m not sure it’s correct, but a huge percentage of the illegal moves that Trump is trying that are challenged in court are rolled back. Yes, there’s been capitulation, but there has been a lot of pushback because what he is doing—look, we, those of us who believe in democracy, have the law on our side; we have the Constitution on our side—so it’s really important to push back. His strategy is to, of course, break the law over and over again out in the open until the law appears to be broken. But the fact is we still have a Constitution. We still have some institutions that are standing up, and it’s really more important to stand up than ever before.
Sargent: Right. The critical point here is that if his larger project is to persuade everyone that there’s no such thing as law anymore and everything is Dear Leader’s whim, then having these victories in court and having law firms stand up is essential to reminding people that there is a law, that there is a Constitution, that there are courts, that there are institutions that are preventing this lawlessness from getting out of control. At least let’s hope they are.
Stewart: No kings. We have a lot of people showing up now for a “No Kings” rally. And a king is exactly what Trump wants to be. In the run-up to the 2024 election, he posted a paraphrase of a quote traditionally attributed to Napoleon. He posted, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” Now, whether or not Napoleon said it, he certainly meant it. He came to power in a 1799 coup on the pretext [that] the French Republic faced an apocalyptic emergency. And that thin rhetoric of emergency is a thin cover for lawbreaking, but it’s been part of the MAGA coalition from the start.
This is a group that claims that we’re facing a permanent emergency; that any opposition to Trump is satanic or demonic; that everyone who’s not on board with the MAGA agenda, including the RINOs, [is] basically a part of a woke Marxist elite. They call us all “woke Communists” or something like that. They claim that if they aren’t allowed to do what they want to do, everyone’s going to be forced into Marxist struggle sessions and Maoist struggle sessions and is going to be forced to change their gender against their will. It’s really ridiculous, but that rhetoric of emergency, that sense of apocalypse becomes a justification for suspending the rule of law in favor of a leader who will operate with the iron fist.
Sargent: Every last bit of resistance is absolutely crucial here. I want to play one more audio of Trump. Listen to this.
Trump (audio voiceover): Harvard has been a disaster. They’ve taken five plus, by the way, $5 billion plus. Five billion. Nobody knew that they were making this kind of … if we didn’t do this, nobody would have, we would have never found this out. They’re taking $5 billion. And I’d rather see that money go to trade schools. And, by the way, they’re totally antisemitic at Harvard, as you know—and some other colleges too, in all fairness to them. And it’s been exposed, very exposed. And I think they’re dealing very badly. Every time they fight, they lose another $250 million. Yesterday, we found another $100 million.
Sargent: Note that Trump here claims to want to spend money on trade schools. Guess what? If Trump wants to spend lots more money on vocational education, he and the GOP Congress can pass something into law that appropriates this money. What strikes me about this—and we have a piece on this up at TNR.com, check it out folks—is that Trump only really gets interested in spending on trade schools if he can say he’s taking the money from Harvard to do so. Everything is zero-sum. Everything has to serve the MAGA Two Minute Hate of the moment. Can you talk about that?
Stewart: Donnie Two Dolls has this very antiquated idea about the kind of economy that he thinks America’s going to get. There was some quote that one of his cronies said where, You’re going to be working in a factory, and your kids are going to be working in the factory, and your grandkids are going to be working in the factory. You know what? A lot of those factories are run by bots and robots and AI. It’s like he’s got this idea that we’re all going to be doing widgets for the rest of our lives. The fact is, America’s university system, its scientific apparatus, its elite institutions are far from perfect, but they have been a source of American greatness. They’ve really made us the envy of the world and been a source of enormous economic prosperity as well. This is why I think it’s especially important to those of us who still hold out the hope for the idea of America to not give up on the language of democracy. When Trump and members of his administration defy court orders, deprive individuals of their rights of speech, deprive institutions of their rights, talk about suspending habeas corpus, etc., it’s really important to hold onto the language and the ideals of a democracy more than ever.
Sargent: Just to close this out, I want to predict that the American people are going to see things the way you’re laying this out. There’s a school of punditry out there which holds that, Oh, well, if Trump attacks elite institutions, he’s automatically going to have the people on his side. And there are certain pundits who will argue that because meritocracy has been gamed by elites, public anger over the failures of meritocracy, which are real failures, will translate into support for Trump when he goes after elite institutions. I’m going to say I think it’s more complicated than that and that people recognize what you’re saying, which is that the university system is an engine of American innovation and greatness; that universities are things to cherish, for all their flaws; and that Trump’s attacks on them aren’t actually about doing anything to correct meritocracy’s failures, that they really are dictatorial and megalomaniacal. Katherine, I think the big point here is basically that we just can’t let them gaslight us into thinking the law is no longer a thing.
Stewart: That’s right. The laws are on our side. The courts, in many instances, are working on behalf of the side of justice and democracy. The Constitution is absolutely on our side. The First Amendment is very clear. And we cannot allow them to fool us into thinking that it doesn’t matter. We can’t let them gaslight us.
Sargent: Katherine Stewart, really well said. Thanks so much for talking to us today. We really appreciate it.
Stewart: Thank you.