By the point The Late Present started airing on Tuesday evening, police in riot gear had already breached and cleared Columbia College’s Hamilton Corridor–which had been occupied by pro-Palestinian scholar protesters within the early hours of Tuesday morning–whereas reportedly making dozens of arrests. However just some miles downtown on the Ed Sullivan Theater, Stephen Colbert was making his assist for the younger demonstrators recognized.
“In fact, one of many greatest tales proper now could be the nationwide, pro-Palestinian scholar protests round school campuses in america,” Colbert defined on Tuesday. “In what’s being known as ‘maybe probably the most important scholar motion because the anti-Vietnam campus protests of the late Nineteen Sixties.’”
The host went on to elucidate that rigidity between college students and college directors, not less than at Columbia, started to ramp up a couple of weeks in the past when college students started establishing an encampment with a view to protest the political happenings in Gaza. In response, college president Minouche Shafik known as upon authorities to assist take away the scholars concerned, and Colbert shouldn’t be OK with that.
Noting that the protests have been taking place at colleges throughout the nation, together with College of North Carolina Chapel Hill and the Ohio State College, Colbert remarked that “school directors are utilizing the basic de-escalation tactic of sending in closely armed police and threatening to name the Nationwide Guard.”
“Now even in the event you don’t agree with the topic of their protests, so long as they’re peaceable, topics needs to be allowed to protest,” stated Colbert to loud cheers from the viewers. “It’s their First Modification proper.”
One one who, paradoxically, appears to not care about these college students’ proper to free speech or meeting is Donald Trump. On Tuesday evening, the previous president known as into Fox Information to rave in regards to the NYPD’s no-nonsense response at Columbia and “the way in which they walked in” and “weren’t afraid of something.”
And earlier than that, Colbert defined, Trump had had the audacity to liken the so-far peaceable campus motion to the lethal occasions of Charlottesville, the place one girl was killed and 35 people have been injured. In comparison with Columbia, Trump known as Charlottesville a “little peanut.”
“Now, earlier than you criticize Trump for downplaying one of many darkest chapters in American historical past as a ‘little peanut,’ I’ll remind you of this disturbing picture from Charlottesville that day,” Colbert replied, reducing to a picture of Mr. Peanut himself giving a thumbs as much as the “Jews is not going to substitute us!” chanters.
