Donald Trump is taking Americans back to school if he’s elected president in 2024, promising a free online university that’s free of “wokeness or jihadism.”
The former president outlined his plan for “The American Academy” in a Truth Social video Wednesday, saying he’ll fund the federal program by “taxing, fining and suing excessively large private university endowments.” According to Trump, elite schools such as Harvard University have enabled a spike in anti-Israel sentiment, converting coeds into subversives.
“We spend more money on higher education than any other country, and yet they’re turning our students into communists and terrorists and sympathizers of many, many different dimensions,” Trump said in the clip. “We can’t let this happen.”
Trump said The American Academy curriculum would be “strictly nonpolitical.”
“There will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed,” he added.
Students would be able to earn the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree, he said.
His campaign team told Politico that the four-times-indicted Trump had not decided who would run The American Academy, but that oversight could come from the private sector, an established government agency or a presidentially appointed board or commission.
Trump University, a previous undertaking in education, resulted in Trump agreeing to pay $25 million to settle fraud lawsuits brought by former students of the real estate seminar program.
Trump’s latest plan appears to be responding in part to President Joe Biden’s renewed attempt at student loan forgiveness.
The proposed American Academy, Trump said, will aim to operate “without adding a single dime to the federal debt.”