President Donald Trump’s supporters are railing against him after he announced plans to let 600,000 Chinese students into the United States to study amid ongoing trade talks with China.
“I hear so many stories that we’re not going to allow their students,” Trump told reporters in the White House on Monday. “We’re going to allow their students to come in. It’s very important, 600,000 students.”
He added: “It’s very important. But we’re going to get along with China.”
Trump’s comments came on the heels of his prior restrictions on Chinese students and skyrocketing tariffs in response to what he called China’s unfair trade practices, alongside his administration’s efforts to enact mass deportations of foreigners in general.
In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the U.S. would “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.” The new policies were meant to “put America first, not China,” Rubio said at the time.
Now, Trump’s decision to welcome Chinese students into the country is being met with backlash from prominent MAGA voices who argue the president is abandoning his so-called “America First” ethos.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham questioned the move during an interview with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick earlier this week on “The Ingraham Angle.”
“Mr. Secretary, with all due respect, how is allowing 600,000 students from the communist country of China putting America first?” she asked Lutnick.
Lutnick responded that Trump’s decision came from a “rational economic view, which is classic Donald Trump.”
“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 [U.S. universities] from the top,” he said, seemingly suggesting that Chinese students attend the top U.S. universities and that once they leave, American students would take their places at top schools and would leave the worst schools to close.
“All [American] students would go up to better schools, and the bottom 15% of universities and colleges would go out of business in America,” Lutnick told Ingraham.
Meanwhile, over on X, formerly Twitter, Trump’s move caused a stir among his supporters, who fearmongered about Chinese students and communism.
“We should not let in 600,000 CHINESE students to attend American colleges and universities that may be loyal to the CCP,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) argued in a post.
She added: “Why are we allowing 600,000 students from China to replace our American student’s opportunities? We should never allow that. And we need more trade school graduates.”
Trump devotee and far-right activist Laura Loomer also slammed Trump’s move in a xenophobic X post that called Chinese students “communist spies” and suggested that China intentionally unleashed the coronavirus on the world — a narrative that fueled a surge of anti-Asian violence.
“Nobody, I repeat nobody, wants 600,000 more Chinese ‘students’ aka Communist spies in the United States,” Loomer wrote.
“China murdered 1.2 million Americans,” she added, in an apparent reference to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Now they get to replace us? This cannot happen.”
A separate X user complained about the “hypocrisy” of Trump preparing to usher in 600,000 Chinese students after previously accusing their country of “stealing” American jobs.
“He roars on stage about China stealing jobs but then rolls out the red carpet for 600,000 Chinese students like a hotel concierge desperate for a tip,” the user wrote. “That’s not strategy, it’s hypocrisy with a spray tan.”
The White House didn’t immediately respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment.
However, another X user argued that Trump’s plan is “a wise decision,” adding, “China is the emerging superpower, so I think we should work together.”