On The Chris Wallace Show on CNN on Saturday morning, leftist journalist Kara Swisher claimed it was “un-American” not to support young people protesting against Israel and shutting down campuses. She said this after being confronted with protesters saying Zionists don’t deserve to live.
Wallace opened the show with Joe Biden’s “very fine people on both sides” quote about the protests, that “he continues to walk a fine line between defending the protesters and denouncing them.” Jonah Goldberg of The Dispatch said these disruptive protests on campuses are “almost all political upside” for the Republicans.
Washington Free Beacon editor-in-chief Eliana Johnson said “I think it’s a missed opportunity for presidential leadership. I think it’s good politics to come out against protesters who are telling Jews to go back to Poland and saying Zionists don’t deserve to live. Those are direct quotes from leaders of the Columbia protests. It’s good politics for Biden to stand against that. The problem for him, of course, is that the left wing of his party, Representative Ilhan Omar, are showing up at the protest to shore them up. So of course, he would alienate the left flank of his party. But I do think it’s a missed opportunity for him to fade into the background of this.”
Swisher, a longtime Wall Street Journal tech reporter who more recently was a columnist and podcaster for The New York Times, somehow thought it was anti-American to be anti-Hamas, as our Brent Baker captured it:
“Not to support” the anti-Semitic pro-Palestinian protesters taking over colleges “is sort of anti-American” – @karaswisher on CNN’s Chris Wallace Show pic.twitter.com/vLeFIZ8BxB
— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) April 27, 2024
KARA SWISHER: Well, some people are saying that, and I think you have to be — the question is, are you for order and against chaos, or for protests and the right to free speech? And what’s interesting is how quickly everyone and shifting. All the free-speech warriors are suddenly like, order, order, we must have order.
And so there are heinous things that are said, but there is a line where you have to support also young people, especially when they do things that they do badly. Not to support them, is sort of anti- American in a way.
JOHNSON: Free speech is fine, but USC has canceled its graduation. Columbia University has canceled classes and put them online. We’ve gone well beyond free speech and into shuttering the operations of universities. And I do think it’s a missed opportunity for Biden to say there are limits. We’ve gone beyond speech and into harassment and disruption here. And we will not stand for that.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, New York Times: Yes, I think we’ve also, though, seen a reaction from some of the police and others that have been deployed on campuses that have been —
SWISHER: Excessive.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Excessive, thank you.
SWISHER: Like Texas today, or Indiana, because then then that’s a whole different story as these young people — you are changing the political mentality of young people right now. And if you push down too hard on it, especially at this age, and not being able to express yourselves, I think you have a much bigger problem later on.
Leftists typically question any police use of force against protesters, and rarely think leftist protesters should be questioned for their tactics. We can all guess where Swisher would have come down if the “young people” had been Tea Party kids disrupting an Obama event. They would be anti-American.