The cast of MSNBC’s Thursday installment of Deadline: White House was not a fan of the Trump Administration’s moves to deport Hamas supporters and anti-Semitic students. As they tell it, to do so is to bring the U.S. down to the moral level of “fascist regimes” and “countries behind the Iron Curtain.”
Alex Wagner returned from interviewing students and professors at Columbia to declare, “The Trump Administration, as much buffoonery as has gone on, has been strategic and targeted, targeting parts of our society that are either off limits or marginalized or not discussed that much, whether it's brown people and people who don't have papers, whether it's federal workers who are part of this vast bureaucracy and therefore faceless, whether it's elite academics in Ivy League institutions, they don't—the bet is that the American public is not keyed in and is not particularly empathetic to those struggles.”
Trying to do a Pastor Martin Niemoller impression, Wagner continued, “But the reality is, as we've seen in dictatorships and fascist regimes across the world, first they come for one group, then they come for another. None of this ends at Columbia, right?”
Guest host Alicia Menendez then turned to former Obama State Department official and managing editor of Time magazine Rick Stengel, “None of it ends at Columbia. I think, Rick, about watching the video that we've now all seen of Rumeysa Ozturk sort of being confronted on the street, the fact that there is not a stated crime, the fact that there is not a stated crime in the case of Mahmoud Khalil—like, I think to Alex's point, I think some people look at this and they say, ‘Well, we don't know that lack of transparency is by design on the part of this administration.’”
So far, we know that Ozturk co-wrote an op-ed that repeated blood libel claims of genocide against Israel and demanded Tufts University divest from Israel. We also know Khalil’s group doesn’t believe Israel has a right to exist, which, according to Stengel’s old boss, is anti-Semitic. If the U.S. would not deliberately welcome anti-Semites when they apply for a visa, why must we continue to allow their presence after they have revealed themselves?
As it was, Menendez continued, “And I want people to understand they are testing these legal theories on immigrants with the possibility and potential of expanding it, once they know that they actually can get away with it.”
If Wagner played the fascism card, Stengel played the communism card, “Yes, it's a process of intimidation. It's a process of testing the system. I mean, I'm old enough to remember the Cold War. And what we used to watch was, you know, people being arrested without a warrant by people with masks over their head in countries behind the Iron Curtain. And that's how we distinguished ourselves from those nations. We didn't do that.”
Stengel also insisted, “We live by the rule of law and due process, and what these are all testing is the rule of law, is due process, is the 14th amendment, and look, I think laws should be tested, but not by arresting innocent people on the street so that that's what America sees, what their government is doing. That's shameful.”
Alternatively, being able to study in the United States is a privilege, and the people fortunate enough to have that opportunity should be thankful to the United States, not trash us and our allies as the reason why there is no peace on Earth while engaging in textbook anti-Semitism.
Here is a transcript for the March 27 show:
MSNBC Deadline: White House
3/27/2025
5:49 PM ET
ALEX WAGNER: Yeah, I actually asked a number of them. I said, “are you guys afraid?” And they said, well, again, they said, “we're citizens. We were born here and we're tenured. And until they come for us, we're going to keep talking.”
But again, like, you know, the Trump Administration, as much buffoonery as has gone on, has been strategic and targeted, targeting parts of our society that are either off limits or marginalized or not discussed that much, whether it's brown people and people who don't have papers, whether it's federal workers who are part of this vast bureaucracy and therefore faceless, whether it's elite academics in Ivy League institutions, they don't—the bet is that the American public is not keyed in and is not particularly empathetic to those struggles. But the reality is, as we've seen in dictatorships and fascist regimes across the world, first they come for one group, then they come for another. None of this ends at Columbia, right?
ALICIA MENENDEZ: None of it ends at Columbia. I think, Rick, about watching the video that we've now all seen of Rumeysa Ozturk, sort of being confronted on the street, the fact that there is not a stated crime, the fact that there is not a stated crime in the case of Mahmoud Khalil, like, I think to Alex's point, I think some people look at this and they say, “Well, we don't know that lack of transparency is by design on the part of this administration.”
And I want people to understand they are testing these legal theories on immigrants with the possibility and potential of expanding it, once they know that they actually can get away with it.
RICK STENGEL: Yes, it's a process of intimidation. It's a process of testing the system. I mean, I'm old enough to remember the Cold War. And what we used to watch was, you know, people being arrested without a warrant by people with masks over their head in countries behind the Iron Curtain. And that's how we distinguished ourselves from those nations. We didn't do that.
We live by the rule of law and due process, and what these are all testing is the rule of law, is due process, is the 14th amendment, and look, I think laws should be tested, but not by arresting innocent people on the street so that that's what America sees, what their government is doing. That's shameful.
