Ingraham Pushes Back Against Trump’s Commerce Secretary Over Chinese Students In US

Fox’s Laura Ingraham pushed back Monday on Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over President Donald Trump’s decision to allow 600,000 students from China to study in the U.S., asking how it would be putting America first.

During an Oval Office event with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung that same day, Trump announced the approval, stressing the importance of maintaining a relationship with China. After playing a clip of Trump’s remarks, Ingraham, on her show “The Ingraham Angle,” pressed Lutnick on how the decision reflects “putting America first.”

“Well, the President’s point of view is that what would happen if you didn’t have those 600,000 students is that you’d empty them from the top, all the students would go up to better schools, and the bottom 15% of universities and colleges would go out of business in America. So his view is he’s taking a rational economic view, which is classic Donald Trump looking at higher education and saying until we modify — ” Lutnick said before Ingraham jumped in.

“That just helps Harvard and UCLA and UCAL Berkeley. Y’all helping those schools. Why?” Ingraham asked. “They’re basically factories of anti-American propaganda. Now they’re getting a big influx of cash because of the Chinese students. I know President Trump has always been very pro-Chinese student. I just don’t understand it. For the life of me, those are 600,000 spots that American kids won’t get.”

In June, Trump suggested that having students from China attend U.S. schools would be beneficial but cautioned that the country needs to be careful and “watch” which students are allowed in. His comments came after he announced on Truth Social that the U.S. and China reached an agreement to allow Chinese students to attend American colleges and universities. (RELATED: Students Reportedly Uncover Chinese Espionage At Top California University)

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Lutnick went on to tell Ingraham that his focus would be on the H-1B program and how the Trump administration will change the way the U.S. hands out green cards.

“I’m involved in changing the H-1B program. We’re going to change that program. Because that’s terrible, right? We’re going to change the green card. We give green cards. The average American makes $75,000 a year, and the average green card recipient $66,000. So we’re taking the bottom quartile,” Lutnick said. “Why are we doing that? That’s why Donald Trump is going to change it. That’s the gold card that’s coming, and that’s where we’re going to start picking the best people to come into this country. It’s time for that to change.”

“I think our American engineering students need to be given the first role at every job, and I think they’re brilliant when given half a chance,” Ingraham said.

The decision from Trump follows the administration’s suspension of foreign nationals’ entry at Harvard University who were seeking “to study or participate in exchange programs” on June 5.

At the time, the White House released a statement detailing that any new Harvard student who is a nonimmigrant under F, M, or J visas would be paused, accusing the university of experiencing a “drastic rise in crime” while failing to “discipline at least some categories of conduct violations on campus,” and pointing to its history “of concerning foreign ties and radicalism.”

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