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Donald Trump's latest 'bizarre' decision | James O'Brien and Simon Marks
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May 29, 2025
Donald Trump has thrown America's higher education sector into financial turmoil after ordering US embassies to halt all student visa applications. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has instructed officials to stop scheduling appointments for student visa applicants with immediate effect. At the same time, the Trump administration is preparing to roll out an expanded social media vetting process for visa applicants, expected to be introduced soon. James O’Brien is joined by LBC’s US Correspondent, Simon Marks, to discuss what he calls an "extraordinary decision" by the US government. “He’s going after everyone,” Marks warns. “Britain should make clear it’s open for business,” he adds. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #jamesobrien #simonmarks #donaldtrump #LBC LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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0:00
Simon Marks, as you know, is standing in for Ben Kentish on LBC this week, which means he has stepped across, hopped across the Atlantic where he normally plies his trade as LBC's US editor
0:09
And whenever he's in town, we like to grab him by the scruff of his neck and drag him into this studio
0:16
There's a book, Simon, by the professor of philosophy, the Jacob Urofsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University
0:23
and his name is Jason Stanley and he wrote a book a couple of years ago
0:28
called Erasing History, How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future
0:33
Now you, like me, have been a little bit wary in the past of reaching too quickly for the F word
0:37
when we're talking about Donald Trump. But let me read you something that he wrote in September of last year
0:42
In the United States, the Republican Party has long been aware of the democratic potential of student movements
0:49
As it lurches closer and closer to authoritarianism, it will, like all right-wing authoritarian movements worldwide, seek to crush dissent
0:58
starting with university students and faculty. That's September of last year, and here we are
1:04
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think if you look at the various targets that Donald Trump is going after
1:09
they all come out of the classic authoritarian playbook. He's going after the judges
1:14
He's going after the lawyers, literally the nation's white-collar law firms. He's, of course, going after journalists
1:21
He's going after scientists. And now he's really turning his fire on universities with this crackdown, particularly on foreign students
1:30
The other now they've announced overnight that they are suspending all interviews at embassies and consulates all over the world for applicants who are seeking to study in the United States and are seeking student visas
1:43
As you know, Harvard was told a few days ago that it's right to bring international students into the country is being revoked
1:50
That has led to a pretty substantial degree of chaos on Harvard's campus because you've got thousands of international students there who fear they need to start packing their bags and leave the United States immediately
2:03
And all of this according to the Trump administration is an effort to prevent what they refer to as radical propagandists from finding themselves in a position where they can participate in acts of anti on campus by which of course the Trump administration means that these students are engaging in their constitutionally protected free speech right
2:27
to participate in pro-Palestinian or, in some cases, pro-Israel demonstrations on campuses
2:34
This in a country with, as you were saying, James, a long tradition of campus activism
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Go back to the 1960s, to the civil rights struggle, to Kent State in the early 1970s
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A long history of this. The Trump administration wants nothing to do with it
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And what it's really doing is cracking down on those constitutional guardrails
2:55
The First Amendment protects those protesters from doing what they're doing, unless, of course, they engage in criminal acts of violence
3:03
Of course. So, I mean, it's opinions that are essentially being... Yeah, well, we've seen Rumesa Ozturk, the Turkish student at Tufts University in Massachusetts, seized off the streets by masked agents of the American government for the simple thought crime of publishing an op-ed critical of Tufts University for failing to divest itself of Israeli interests that it holds
3:33
in accordance with a vote that had been taken by the Senate at Tufts University
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seized off the streets and disappeared by the government for, I think, 72 hours
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while her lawyers eventually tracked her down to some detention facility in Louisiana
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1,500 miles from that street off which, to the view of onlookers
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she appeared to be being kidnapped. I mean, there are two ways into this, and as with all things Trump
4:01
It could be any of them or indeed one that we haven't thought of. Either he does have a particular problem with pro-Palestinian protests
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or people describing Israel as committing war crimes or even as Kenneth Roth, former head of Human Rights Watch
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explained to me not long ago why the word genocide is now applicable
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But that would mean that Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister
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is not allowed to study at Harvard because he's used the phrase war crimes in recent days to describe what is going on in Gaza So either he has a particular animus for Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel continuing actions in Gaza or he got a particular problem with universities in general
4:39
I'd lean a little bit more towards the latter. Yeah, I think it might not be either or
4:43
I think it might be both and. I mean, we know that the Trump administration going against some of those early participants
4:50
in the pro-Palestinian protests on campus was literally provided names by pro-Israel political action groups in the United States
4:59
given names of people that they were recommending Trump go after. And some of those names included Mahmoud Khalil, for example
5:07
and others who have been seized and threatened with deportation. But I think more broadly, you know, authoritarian governments crack down on institutions
5:18
that threaten their ability to be authoritarian. and universities are among those institutions
5:25
This is not a uniquely American Trump experience. We've seen it in many other parts of the world
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where hardline rulers have gone after people who might seek to constrain their constant desire
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to acquire more and more power. What is so extraordinary, though, is that for this mercantile president
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the most mercantile of all American presidents, There are 1.1 million international students studying in the United States
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Last year alone, they brought $44 billion into the country. They created..
5:59
Because it costs a fortune in tuition and housing. I mean, one of the reasons why my two lads are not in American universities
6:06
they're studying over here. 378,000 jobs are created as a result of the presence
6:12
of that 1.1 million international students. So it's amazing that the man who wants to keep 10% baseline tariffs on all British goods apart from steel, aluminium and 100,000 British cars a year is not making the argument that actually these international students, let's be honest, are not radical propagandists
6:33
They are an absolute engine driver for the American economy. It bizarre I mean how often do we use the word bizarre or indeed fascistic as you perfectly explained But it also means that a lot of young people in this country I think there are 10 Brits 10 undergrads yeah 10 undergraduates will be thinking about where they going to go in September It that time of year isn it
6:54
I mean, who would want to go to the States now? They're going to vet everything that you've ever done on social media, looking for opinions they disapprove of
7:01
Looking for opinions among the student body, among the faculty, and among the administrative staff at all these universities if they want to carry on receiving federal funds
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And the federal funds, Harvard, you know, has got a massive endowment. It will survive Donald Trump
7:17
Many of these universities have much smaller endowments on which they can rely. And so those federal funds are hugely important
7:23
I do think there are two big challenges here for the British government. Number one, what kind of support is it going to give to those 10,000 British undergraduates in American universities in the event that they do suddenly have to pack their bags and get out
7:37
And number two, there is such an opportunity here to say to American families, Britain is open for business
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Send your kids here. Help restore the funding for British higher educational institutions
7:53
And this is happening, of course, at precisely the moment. The government here is actually making it harder for international students to come and study in the UK, which seems like, to my eyes, a monumental own goal
8:06
You know why. It's because numbers, isn't it? It's because we need to bring down net migration. But it's a terrible time to be a young person. And now they're having some of their educational opportunities shut down by the by the president of the United States of America. I mean, of course, one thing you can say with some certainty is that he backs down a lot, doesn't he? Certainly on tariffs. But on this one, I suspect less like
8:28
Yeah, I mean, everything's a transaction, isn't it? And there was some indication that Marco Rubio had actually backed down from cancelling some of the student visas that they were threatening to cancel a couple of months ago
8:39
But they have come at this now with such vehemence. And because they are so hostile to universities, J.D. Vance made a speech a couple of years ago absolutely laying out that the plan was to, as a priority, root out radicals from within America's universities once they got back into power
9:00
They've gone so far down that road that I think they would find it very difficult now to row completely back
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