Trump says police raid on university protesters 'beautiful to watch'

Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Wednesday (May 1) it "was a beautiful thing to watch" New York police officers raiding a Columbia University building occupied by pro-Palestinian students, calling the protesters "raging lunatics and Hamas sympathizers." "New York was under siege last night," Trump told supporters at a campaign rally in Wisconsin. He praised the police officers for arresting about 300 protesters. Trump was addressing the spread of pro-Palestinian protests across the U.S. in recent days. Republicans have accused some university administrators of turning a blind eye to antisemitic rhetoric and harassment. The Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip and the ensuing Israeli offensive on the Palestinian enclave have unleashed the biggest outpouring of U.S. student activism since anti-racism protests in 2020. "Under no circumstances shall we bring thousands of refugees from Hamas controlled terrorist epicenters like Gaza to America," Trump said, referring to media reports of plans by the administration of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, to accept some Gaza refugees. "We do not need a jihad in the United States." CBS News said it had obtained internal government documents showing that U.S. officials have been discussing different options to resettle Palestinians who have been displaced by the fighting in Gaza after they pass a battery of screening tests. Trump was staging rallies on Wednesday in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan as polls show him locked in a close race with Biden ahead of the Nov. 5 election. Trump's visit to the two swing states marked his first major campaign events since the April 15 start of his New York criminal trial, in which he is accused of falsifying business records concerning a hush money payment to a porn star. Subscribe to the ABS-CBN News channel! - http://bit.ly/TheABSCBNNews Watch full episodes on iWantTFC for FREE here: http://iwanttfc.com Visit our website at http://news.abs-cbn.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/abscbnNEWS Twitter: https://twitter.com/abscbnnews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abscbnnews