of course we'll get into this more but it's of course just been very remarkable

particularly over the past week to see how members of Congress have have totally

reframed to say the least what these protesters are asking for and what they have been asking for for years.

This is again not new.

So let's talk about this reframing because last week there were I think it was all New York Republican representatives and

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson all descended on Columbia's campus to give a speech

which was met with booze and jeers from the audience, but which didn't, I think, anticipate a positive response.

It was a kind of performative pageantry to demonstrate to a broader right-leaning audience or is a pro-Zionist audience that these

representatives were clearly standing against the students and that has come

along with a number of statements from other elected officials,

whether it be Tom Cotton, who has now for well over a week been making statements that Insight quite literally approve of violence directed at

protesters where there was a statement about how if protesters block traffic and glue their

hands to a car then they they should have the skin ripped off

their hand, they should be thrown over the bridge, statements like that.

Or Governor Greg Abbott in Texas, who has openly backed the use of police force and state violence to

suppress the protest catch us up on how much this has really escalated because you

really can't overstate it. This is obviously a

podcast not a visual medium primarily, but the imagery that we've seen

across the country is gone from having a conversation about okay USC

bans their valedictorian from giving remarks, not because they know anything about what she's going to say, but presumably because she is Muslim, there is this presumption that she's going to say something about Palestine to make parents uncomfortable at graduation.

And that has out now escalated into cancelling the graduation altogether because of protest against the action of suppressing the literal

speech of this valedictorian who's worked hard for four years to get into a

...