President Donald Trump was so enraged by a news report saying he was backing off his demand that Harvard pay the administration a $200 million fine that he has decided to shake down the university for $1 billion instead.
The administration has been waging war on Harvard as part of a broader effort to make higher education more MAGA-friendly, including canceling $2 billion in federal grants, investigating the university for alleged civil rights violations, and trying to strip the university of its ability to enroll foreign students.
While Columbia University agreed to pay the administration a $200 million settlement to end similar investigations, Harvard has refused to make any direct payments, and instead challenged the administration’s tactics in court.
The two sides have been negotiating for months to end the legal battles—which so far Harvard has been winning—and resolve what the Trump administration says is a failure on the part of the university to adequately address antisemitism on campus.
On Monday, The New York Times reported that, according to four Trump administration and Harvard officials, the embattled president had finally dropped his $200 million demand in hopes of reaching a deal and scoring a victory in the face of record-low approval ratings.
But just hours after the report was published, shortly before midnight, Trump raged in a Truth Social post that the Times’ story was “completely wrong,” and demanded that the “morons” running the storied paper change their article “immediately.”
He then proceeded to “correct” the record in a separate, rambling post claiming that Harvard “wanted to do a convoluted job training concept,” which was rejected by the administration, to “get out of a large cash settlement of more than $500 million, a number that should be much higher for the serious and heinous illegalities that they have committed.”
“This should be a Criminal, not Civil, event, and Harvard will have to live with the consequences of their wrongdoings. In any event, this case will continue until justice is served,” Trump added. “We are now seeking One Billion Dollars in damages, and want nothing further to do, in the future, with Harvard University.”
He then quoted the one part of the “Failing New York Times” story that he apparently liked, namely that some people connected to Harvard think the university will eventually have to cut a deal with the administration because its financial model relies on federal funding.
The Daily Beach has reached out to The New York Times and Harvard University for comment.
In July, Harvard said it was willing to spend $500 million on workforce programs as part of a deal to restore its federal funding and end the legal stand-off. It balked, however, at making any direct payments to the government, The New York Times reported at the time.
Fast-forward six months, and the president has been eager to finally reach a deal with Harvard in order to claim a victory as he faces outrage over the administration’s violent immigration enforcement tactics, which resulted in federal agents shooting and killing U.S. citizens Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.
Two weeks ago, he ran into billionaire investment executive Stephen A. Schwartzman, who is helping with negotiations between Harvard and the White House, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, according to the Times.
He asked Schwarzman to call him about the deal, and when they spoke a week later, Trump said he would drop the $200 million fine if it meant the two sides reaching an agreement. Education Secretary Linda McMahon also said something similar in a separate conversation with Schwarzman, according to the Times’ sources.
Harvard’s leaders, however, are wary of facing an even bigger backlash if they strike a deal with the administration at a moment of heightened tensions.
They’re also wary of the administration’s habit of reaching deals with universities—including Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania—only to come back later and ask them to become even more MAGA, the Times reported.
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