President Donald Trump has shrugged off MAGA fury and is standing by his decision to allow 600,000 Chinese student visas to be issued—calling it the “right thing to do.”
MAGA rose up in arms this week after Trump reversed course from his administration’s earlier hard-line stance on restricting foreign student visas.
Several of the president’s most loyal allies, including his former adviser Steve Bannon, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, activist Laura Loomer, and Fox News host Laura Ingraham, panned the surprise move as a betrayal of the “America First” agenda.
“I just don’t understand it for the life of me,” Ingraham said on The Ingraham Angle. “Those are 600,000 spots that American kids won’t get.”
But Trump argued that barring another country’s students from coming to the U.S. would be “insulting” in an interview with The Daily Caller, the right-wing website co-founded by Tucker Carlson.
“I have a very good relationship with [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping]. I think it’s very insulting to a country when you say you’re not going to take your students,” Trump said.
He argued that admitting Chinese students is “good for our system,” particularly for “lesser colleges.”
Trump made comments at the marathon Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, saying that he told Xi he was “honored” to have students from China in the U.S.
The president’s curiously accommodating remarks, which come as trade negotiations continue between the two countries, sharply depart from his administration’s previous stance.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in May that the federal government would work to “aggressively revoke” visas for Chinese students, including those with ties to the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Trump, however, denied Friday that he was expecting something “in return” from China for the policy U-turn.
“No, I just think it’s, I think it’s, I think what we’re doing is the right thing to do,” he said. “It’s good to get along with countries, not bad, especially, you know, nuclear-powered countries.”
The 79-year-old president emphasized that the 600,000 visas would be issued over two years, keeping the number of Chinese students roughly in line with previous years. In 2024, there were around 277,000 students from China attending American universities, according to The New York Times.
Trump also adopted a softer tone toward Harvard University, despite relentlessly attacking the school for months and moving to revoke its ability to enroll international students partly over claims that it had collaborated with the CCP.
“I don’t want them to die, no, I want them to be great, but I want to be fair,” he said. “And you know, they’re being punished.”
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