Protesters' takeover of a building at Columbia University marks a "sad day," but it was to be expected given the "failed leadership," Rep. Anthony D'Esposito, R-N.Y., told Newsmax.
Columbia University President Minouche Shafik and other leaders chose to "ignore" and "try to negotiate with the lunatics that have taken over," D'Esposito told Tuesday's "Wake Up America."
"I said to the president the other day that you cannot rationalize with irrational people, and that's exactly what she's attempting to do," D'Esposito said. "She set the times that she wanted these individuals out of the quad, and they were ignored. They remain there."
Early Tuesday, dozens of anti-Israel protesters took over Hamilton Hall at Columbia, flying a Palestinian flag from a window, and D'Esposito said the occupation shows that "this is no longer, or never really, was a peaceful protest.
"They actually took a hand vote if they were staying or not: I mean that the inmates are running the asylum," he said. "These are now individuals committing crimes on the campus. They need to be arrested. They need to be thrown out of the school.
"The president needs to resign immediately, and we need to take back Columbia."
Democrats will "pay the price" for the ongoing protests at Columbia and other universities, D'Esposito predicted.
"They can try to spin this however they want," he said. "They've tried to spin the border. They've tried to spin crime, and I guess now they'll try to spin the disasters that are occurring at these petri dishes of hate throughout the country."
President Joe Biden, he added, has been "virtually silent" about the protests "because he is pandering to the far left of his party."
"You have the president being led around, legitimately, by the far left progressives because he's concerned about winning states like Michigan and Minnesota, places that Democrats would historically have done well, but his poll numbers are in the dumpster," he said.
States led by Republicans, D'Esposito further pointed out, have protests under control and people are being placed under arrest, but "then you have places like Columbia who are ignoring and trying to negotiate."
D'Esposito also advocated for his Police Our Border Act that calls on Attorney General Merrick Garland to submit a report about the effects of the border crisis on the nation's law enforcement officers.
"The border crisis affects every industry across the United States of America every single day, but it places this heavy, heavy burden on law enforcement," said D'Esposito, a former New York City Police Department detective. "It affects their resources. It affects their ability to respond to calls and affects now the technology that they're using.
"I think that this is a pretty common sense piece of legislation that is going to be marked up this week by the Judiciary Committee and, hopefully, brought to the floor during Police Week."
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