CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Perez did his best Daniel Dale impression on Thursday’s episode of The Situation Room, where he attempted to fact-check President Trump’s assessment of Harvard, in his words, as a “cesspool of leftist thinking,” as false because conservatives, such as Ted Cruz, have attended the school.
The context for Perez’s failed foray into fact-checking came as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem upped the stakes in the battle between Harvard and the administration as he told co-host Wolf Blitzer, “This is an escalating series of threats from the Trump administration against the university, Wolf. And the latest one is from the Homeland Security Department, which is telling Harvard that they may lose their ability to host foreign students.”
After reading from a letter Noem sent to Harvard, Perez rolled on, “Now, this is all over their demands for Harvard to turn over disciplinary records of students, visa holders, who may have been participating in some of these protests over the last year over the Gaza War, Wolf. And obviously, the IRS is also now looking at revoking the tax exemption of Harvard University. That would be a huge hit for the university. The university has so far refused to comply with Trump's demands.”
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