Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) condemned pro-Palestinian protesters for turning college campuses into “garbage dumps” and calling demonstrators “crazy.”
Vance joined Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on Tuesday to discuss the start of the school year at Columbia University, where earlier this year, a pro-Palestine encampment became violent and sparked a nationwide movement to call on the U.S. to stop sending arms to Israel in its war with Hamas.
If elected, Vance said he and former President Trump will “enforce the law.”
“Nobody gets the right to harass their fellow students. Nobody gets a right to set up 10 encampments and turn their college campuses into garbage dumps. And nobody gets the right to block their fellow students from attending class,” Vance said. “This isn’t rocket science.”
After encampments began late in the spring semester at Columbia, students across the country at more than 400 higher education establishments began their own encampments. The demonstrations were mostly peaceful, but a few became violent as police and students clashed over First Amendment rights and the ongoing war in Gaza.
Vance reiterated that the law needed to be enforced.
“Whether it’s anti-Jewish bigotry or any other form of bigotry, just enforce the law,” he said.
“Make the crazy people protest within the First Amendment and within the legal frameworks that are appropriate, and so, as long as you do that, these college campuses are going to be fine,” Vance continued.
The Ohio senator criticized university administrators for allowing students to break the law, harass other students and turn campuses into “dumps.”
“Just stop it. Enforce the law,” he said. “Let everybody speak their mind, but do it without harassing your fellow students. It’s not hard.”
