Trump fumes Harvard has 'lost its way,' blasts its hiring former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio

Cayla Bamberger, New York Daily News on Apr 16, 2025

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President Donald Trump slammed Harvard University on Wednesday as having “lost its way” for hiring former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, suggesting it was further evidence the school should no longer receive federal funds.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump abruptly attacked de Blasio and onetime Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot as “two of the WORST and MOST INCOMPETENT mayors in the history of our country” and “Radical Left fools” — who he argued were representative of broader, left-leaning politics among Harvard faculty.

“Many others, like these Leftist dopes, are teaching at Harvard,” Trump said, “and because of that, Harvard can no longer be considered even a decent place of learning … and should no longer receive Federal Funds.”

The Big Apple’s erstwhile leader took the jab in stride: “The worst president in American history called me the worst mayor in American history,” de Blasio said after an unrelated press conference in lower Manhattan on child care.

Following his two terms as mayor, Harvard hired de Blasio in 2022 as a teaching fellow at its school of public policy and government. Lightfoot was hired by Harvard’s public health school the next year.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in federal grants and $60 million in contracts at Harvard, after the school announced it would not adhere to demands to dismantle diversity initiatives and crack down on pro-Palestinian student protesters.

The federal government has also threatened to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status.

“It really is surreal,” de Blasio said. “He’s … talking about how to take money away from an institution that does research on science, on health care on curing diseases and on national security. It’s perverse. And then, he’s blaming them for hiring me years ago.”

“He also said I got a massive salary. I’m still waiting for that massive salary,” he quipped to the Daily News.

In his online tirade, Trump claimed Harvard paid de Blasio and Lightfoot “ridiculously high salaries/fees.”

“Harvard has been hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE,” the head of state wrote.

De Blasio stressed the importance of keeping the focus on the big picture: The public needs research from universities, which he said Trump has moved to destroy for his own political gain. So far, Harvard researchers have received stop-work orders for federal health grants on ALS and Lou Gehrig’s disease, according to the student newspaper Harvard Crimson.

“This has reached a level of purely unacceptable stuff, not just because of the name-calling, but because he’s literally destroying an entire bipartisan consensus that’s gone on for decades: that we honor our universities,” de Blasio said. “That’s dangerous for this country’s future.”

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