Trump and allies raise baseless comparisons between Gaza protests and January 6 riot

Steps away from the doors of his criminal trial on Tuesday, Donald Trump compared nationwide college campus protests against Israel’s ongoing siege of Gaza to his supporters launching an assault on the halls of Congress on January 6.

“They took over a building, that is a big deal. And I wonder if what’s going to happen to them will be anything comparable to what happened to J6, because they’re doing a lot of destruction, a lot of damages, a lot of people getting hurt very badly,” the former president said from the criminal courthouse in Manhattan on Tuesday.

“I wonder if that’s going to be the same kind of treatment they gave J6,” he added. “Let’s see how that all works out. I think I can give you the answer right now. And that’s why people have lost faith in our court system.”

In a rambling interview with Fox News that night, while New York City Police Department officers stormed Columbia University’s campus and arrested hundreds of people, the former president condemned protesters’ damage to a “landmark” building and accused “Jewish politicians” of “abandoning” Israel.

“You go back 10 years, Israel was protected by Congress. Now, Congress is just doing numbers that are unbelievable with I think a very, very small group of people within Congress and it’s gotta stop,” he said.

Students have set up encampments and anti-war demonstrations at university campuses across the US, putting pressure on college administrators to divest from ties to Israel as more than 30,000 Palestinians, including 13,000 children, have been killed in Israel’s attacks in Gaza.

By contrast, dozens of police officers were violently assaulted on 6 January 2021, when a mob of Mr Trump’s supporters breached barricades and broke into the US Capitol in a