Jeff Flake on Recent Columbia University, CBS Deals with Trump : ‘All of Us Should Be Concerned Where This Goes’

DOWNEY: “You can do so without half a billion dollars of taxpayer money.”
PHILLIP: “The CBS of it all — the CBS of it all is the other piece of this puzzle, because there is a seeming almost quid pro quo here happening. They need a deal done. In order to get the deal done, they have to go through the very MAGA head of the FCC, Brendan Carr, who told Oliver Darcy that he thinks it‘s just sad, about the Colbert firing. ‘Colbert doesn‘t have it anymore, if he ever did. I don‘t know if it‘s from Trump derangement syndrome, TDS, or something else.’ I‘ve never heard an FCC chairman, a regulatory person speak in that way, but this is the MAGA world, and companies have to go through that, and then they have to pay $16 million to the presidential library and maybe give $20 million in ads. And then they have to allow the president of the United States to dictate how they run their companies by getting rid of DEI. That‘s what‘s also happening here.”
FLAKE: “Well, Scott is right in that these universities needed to change. Obviously, there was anti-Semitism going on in a big way. They needed to change. I think a lot of those changes have been made, gratefully. But I think all of us should be concerned where this goes. I wouldn‘t want Donald Trump, I wouldn‘t want Joe Biden, I wouldn‘t want anybody, any president, to be the arbiter of what is truth and what is not, and what universities have to do to be able to attract foreign students or whatnot. This has gone too far in many areas, particularly with the law firms, basically telling them they‘ve got to pay up or pony up, or they‘re going to be investigated or left aside.”
PHILLIP: “That’s probably one of the reasons why it‘s not happening anymore, yeah, because they‘ve lost — “
NAVARRO: “Regarding the removal of of grants, look, you know, there‘s essential cancer research, Alzheimer‘s research, Parkinson‘s research, things that do nothing to combat anti-Semitism and that are going to hurt us and the people that we love for years to come, because essential research is being done away with in one fell swoop.”
PHILLIP: “All right. I just got to say, Elon Musk obviously denies that that gesture that he made was a Nazi salute. But up next for us, more breaking news.”