A spokesperson for first lady Melania Trump shut down a “completely false” theory that her husband, the president, is warring with Harvard University because her son, Barron, was supposedly not accepted to the school.
The Palm Beach Post first reported that first lady spokesperson Nicholas Clemens said, “Barron did not apply to Harvard, and any assertion that he, or that anyone on his behalf, applied is completely false.”
This comes amid online rumors that President Donald Trump is targeting Harvard with federal funding cuts because Barron, who just finished his freshman year at New York University, was supposedly rejected by the school.
The Trump administration is asking all federal agencies to find ways to terminate all federal contracts with Harvard amid an ongoing standoff over foreign students’ records at the Ivy League school. Harvard has already sued in federal court seeking the restoration of about $3.2 billion in federal grant funding frozen by the administration since last month.
HARVARD FOREIGN STUDENTS FACE UNCERTAIN FUTURE AMID TRUMP CAMPUS CRACKDOWNS
In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump accused Harvard of being “very antisemitic” and said he was considering giving the school’s federal funding to trade schools “all across our land.”
“What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!” he wrote.
In a letter Thursday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem informed Harvard’s leadership that the university had lost its “privilege” of enrolling foreign students as a result of the institution’s “refusal to comply with multiple requests to provide the Department of Homeland Security with pertinent information while perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ policies.”
On Friday, Judge Allison Burroughs, a President Barack Obama appointee, granted Harvard a temporary restraining order, preventing the government from revoking the Ivy League school’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. The program permits the university to host international students with F-1 or J-1 visas to study in the U.S.
TRUMP RAMPS UP HEAT ON HARVARD: HERE ARE 5 REASONS FROM THE UNIVERSITY’S OWN INVESTIGATION
Trump said this week that Harvard is being “very slow” to turn over information on foreign students.
“We are still waiting for the Foreign Student Lists from Harvard so that we can determine, after a ridiculous expenditure of BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, how many radicalized lunatics, troublemakers all, should not be let back into our Country,” Trump wrote.
“Harvard is very slow in the presentation of these documents, and probably for good reason!” he wrote. “The best thing Harvard has going for it is that they have shopped around and found the absolute best Judge (for them!) – But have no fear, the Government will, in the end, WIN!”
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.
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