Trump Praises Police Crackdowns on Campus Protests

In his first campaign rally since his criminal trial in Manhattan began, former President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday urged college presidents to take a tougher approach to protests over the war in Gaza that have swept across campuses and praised police action at the demonstrations.

Calling protesters “raging lunatics” and suggesting without evidence that they were hired and paid by liberal groups to draw attention away from the surge of migrants at the border, Mr. Trump commended New York City police officers who, in riot gear, arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Columbia University and cleared a building that they had occupied.

Speaking to supporters in Waukesha, Wis., Mr. Trump then called for similar actions at universities across the country. “To every college president, I say remove the encampments immediately,” he said, “vanquish the locals and take back our campuses for all of the normal students.”

Mr. Trump and fellow Republicans have seized on the demonstrations as a wedge issue that they hope can foment discontent among President Biden’s Democratic base while also reinforcing Mr. Trump’s frequent contention that Mr. Biden is a weak leader who is steering the country into chaos.

In the past week, Mr. Trump has also tried to downplay the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, by calling it “peanuts” compared with the campus protests. One woman was killed and nearly 40 people were injured after a neo-Nazi plowed his car through a crowd of counterprotesters in Charlottesville.

And building on his bid to portray federal prosecutors as politically motivated, Mr. Trump suggested the government was being too lenient with the protesters, comparing them to his supporters who stormed