‘No federal funds?’
President Trump threatened to yank federal funding from the University of California’s Berkeley campus on Thursday, a day after rioters forced the cancellation of a speech by a conservative firebrand.
“If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?” Trump tweeted at 6:30 a.m.
A couple dozen organized agitators turned what had been a peaceful protest ahead of a planned speech by Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos into a fullblown riot (left) — destroying a Starbucks, vandalizing ATMs and setting fires, authorities said.
University cops argued that it wasn’t the school’s students who were to blame, and none of the 1,500 people protesting were arrested.
“This was a group of agitators who were masked up, throwing rocks, commercialgrade fireworks and Molotov cocktails at officers. Those were not our students,” said university Police Chief Margo Bennet.
Trump’s tweet alarmed UC officials, who said that the university wanted the speech to go on, as long as students were safe, but that cops had to cancel it when the rioting started.
“We went through extraordinary lengths to prevent violence, to facilitate the planning and presentation of the event,” Dan Mogulof, a spokesman for UC Berkeley, told The San Francisco Chronicle.
“The university has condemned the violence and deeply regrets the fact that basic First Amendment rights were unable to be supported,” he said.
Yiannopoulos, 32, has been labeled a white supremacist for his speeches and writing on Breitbart, which had been run by Trump senior adviser Steve Bannon.
Trump’s threat to cut funds could cost the university billions of dollars in energy-research contracts, but DonHeller, an expert in federal funding at the University of San Francisco, told the East Bay Times:
“There’s nothing I’m aware of in federal law that would allow the federal government to strip financial-aid funds or research funds from a university because the government claims they aren’t respecting First Amendment rights.”