“Hundreds of liberals rioted on campus, burning stores, smashing windows, clashing with police,” Starnes said, incorrectly. “The rampaging mob even forced the university to shut down a speech by conservative firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos, but it did not seem to satisfy the crowd’s bloodlust. … The birthplace of free speech became its graveyard.”

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“So here’s what needs to happen,” Starnes continued. “President Trump should immediately issue an executive order, blocking Berkeley students from receiving any federal funding. Same goes for any other public university that wants to silence conservative voices. Free speech for all, or no federal money.”

Starnes is well known for this sort of exaggeration and extrapolation to the extremes. In this case, it wasn’t “hundreds” that rioted, and the violent fringe in such situations can usually better be described as “anarchists” than “liberals.” But notice the quick conflation of some violent protesters with all of the protesters — and then with the full student body at Berkeley. Notice how “forced the university to shut down a speech” becomes a “public university that wants to silence conservative voices” — intentionally conflating the school with the students.

Trump often watches “Fox and Friends,” and about a half-hour later, he tweeted a sentiment similar to Starnes’s.

Trump’s conflation is even more stark. The school “does not allow free speech” and “practices violence on innocent people” he suggests in the tweet — which is clearly untrue.

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The school canceled Yiannopoulos’s appearance because of the threat to public safety, but it had defended the planned appearance for some time before this week. In a statement released last week, the school’s chancellor reminded the university community that Yiannopoulos could speak because the school supported the right to free speech. An excerpt:

Consistent with the dictates of the First Amendment as uniformly and decisively interpreted by the courts, the university cannot censor or prohibit events, or charge differential fees. Some have asked us whether attacks on individuals are also protected. In fact, critical statements and even the demeaning ridicule of individuals are largely protected by the Constitution; in this case, Yiannopoulos’s past words and deeds do not justify prior restraint on his freedom of expression or the cancellation of the event.

The idea that U.C. Berkeley collectively “practices violence on innocent people” is, of course, ludicrous.

Incidentally, Trump can’t simply cut off funding for the school unilaterally. Mark Harkins, senior fellow of the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, explained by phone that the president can’t sign the executive order that Starnes imagines.

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“I can’t think of a mechanism where he could do that,” Harkins said. The school and its students get hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the federal government. Much of that, though, is in grants like Pell Grants, for tuition, and research spending. Those obligated grants can’t be simply undone; the government is legally obligated to allocate the money. “Executive orders can’t break the law,” he said.

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“Congress can pass appropriations bills that restrict future funds through limitation amendments,” Harkins explained. “The quickest way would be as part of the omnibus [spending bill] that Congress needs to pass by the end of April. However, any legislation like that requires 60 votes in the Senate.”

About an hour after Trump’s tweet, senior adviser Kellyanne Conway appeared on Fox News to defend his argument.

“The president has a point,” she said. “They don’t welcome free speech, they’re not protecting the First Amendment. I’m sure they don’t hear much of it off the college campus, in the classrooms. And that’s just unfortunate.”

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The same conflation. But Conway also took it further.

“I don’t even know if they know what they’re protesting,” Conway said of the rioters. “I’d love to do this big survey nationwide and ask everybody outside these airports, on the college campuses: What’s got you so in a lather? I mean, really, is it that — free speech? Having somebody maybe on your campus who has a dissenting point of view or wants to present an alternative point of view?”

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It is safe to say that the protests at the airports are not because of concerns over free speech and conservatives appearing on college campuses. They are, instead, concern about the effects of Trump’s immigration executive order.

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Notice how this extended outward, though. Violent rioters in Berkeley become all of the protesters at Berkeley, which becomes the entire university, which becomes every protester against Trump of the past two weeks. And the proposed solution for Berkeley canceling Yiannopoulos’s speech in the wake of that violence? A unilateral — and apparently illegal — order eliminating all of its federal funding.