GOP strategist and CNN commentator Scott Jennings was criticized for hypocrisy by fellow panelist Jay Michaelson after claiming that President Donald Trump is "standing up" for Jewish students and combating antisemitism in ordering a funding freeze for Harvard University.
Since returning to office, Trump has made reshaping higher education a priority, threatening to pull federal research funding unless universities fall in line. His administration’s new rules—set to take effect by August 2025—target everything from DEI programs to international student admissions, while demanding “viewpoint” diversity and threatening to shut down noncompliant departments.
Harvard isn’t having it. On Monday, the university became the first major institution to push back, accusing the White House of trying to “control” its community.
President Alan Garber said the demands violate First Amendment protections and “threaten our values” as a private institution. “No government,” he said, should be telling universities “what…to teach, whom…to admit and hire,” or what to research.
After Harvard rejected the administration’s demands, the Department of Education’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism hit back—freezing $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and another $60 million in contracts.
But to hear Jennings tell it, Trump attacking the nation's oldest university is entirely justified:
“I mean, I believe that what’s happened on these campuses in the Ivy League and in other places, mostly private institutions, has been an abomination. And someone has to stand up for these Jewish kids."
You can watch what happened in the video below.
Michaelson replied:
“It’s not gonna be the rabbi at the table.”
Jennings continued:
“Until Donald Trump came along and his administration and decided to connect federal funds to stamping out the scourge of anti-Semitism on these campuses—”
But Michaelson interrupted, noting that rapper Kanye West brought white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes to a dinner with Trump in November 2022.
“Nobody — nobody, nobody was willing to stand up for them,” Jennings said, as Michaelson jumped in with references to “the Sieg Heil salute” and “standing up for Alliance for Deutschland,” pointing to billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk’s public defense of Germany’s far-right party, known for espousing neo-Nazi rhetoric.
Jennings argued that the American people don't want a private university with a "$53 billion endowment to get $1" while Jewish students face discrimination on campus. Michaelson dismissed the remark as "a joke. What a complete joke." When Jennings pressed, asking why, Michaelson shot back that Republicans are "nowhere" on the issue, claiming they have "white supremacists in your party and in your administration."
Jennings was swiftly called out for backing the administration—which is clearly more antisemitic than not.
Jennings' defense of the administration came just days after Trump diverted from a conversation about Israeli hostages being held by Hamas and commended Nazis who he claimed showed "love" to Holocaust victims.
Trump made the remarks during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office after he was asked by reporters about his plan to secure the release of the 59 Israeli hostages being held in Gaza by Hamas.
These remarks effectively deny that the Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its allies from 1933 to 1945, across Europe and North Africa. The peak of this violence took place during World War II. By the war’s end in 1945, nearly two out of every three European Jews had been killed by the Nazis and their collaborators.
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