Speaker Johnson: “If you are on a student visa and you’re an American and you’re an aspiring young terrorist who wants to prey upon your Jewish classmates, you’re going home. We’re going to arrest your tail and send you home where you belong.”
Full exchange:
Reporter: “In your estimation, what crime did Mahmoud Khalil commit to warrant his arrest, detention, and potential deportation?”
(Johnson): “Let me tell you something. I went face down the angry mob at Columbia at the height of that stuff, when the pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas protesters were there. I’m telling you, this is my own observation, not something I read in a newspaper. It was dangerous.
I met with Jewish students before they went to campus who were holed away off-campus because they were instructed by the administration not to come to class, which they paid for, for fear of their physical safety. The administrators there refused to take control of that campus. They refused to allow the police department to come in and take control, and it turned into chaos. The President has since been removed, and now they’ve got the same problem again. Columbia and other universities have to keep control of the campuses.
The first responsibility of an administration is ensuring the safety of the students who are paying tuition to be there. For crying out loud, this madness has to stop. We have to get control of it. This guy, apparently, was a mastermind of those very things—when the gnashing of teeth and the ripping of clothes and the people screaming at me, wanting to rip me limb from limb because I was there talking about moral clarity and how there’s a right and a wrong.
They were doing that. They disrupted the campus. They were threatening physical violence to their fellow students. If you’re on a student visa, I’m going to say this clearly: If you are on a student visa and you’re in America, and you’re an aspiring young terrorist who wants to prey upon your Jewish classmates, you’re going home. We’re going to arrest your tail and we’re going to send you home where you belong. And this is just getting started.
So, look, I appreciate free speech. I used to defend it in courts, but this is far beyond the pale of that. When you are threatening your classmates and spewing anti-Semitism and all this hatred, it’s enough. And I think the American people understand that; they’re supporting it, and I’m glad we have a President who’s strong enough to lay down the law.
Thanks a lot.”
Reporter: “Thank you.”