President Trump Threatens UC Berkeley Funds Following Riot

President Trump threatened UC Berkeley funds Thursday morning after the school's protests over right-wing speaker Milo Yiannopoulos turned violent, leading to the cancelation of his talk.

"If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?" Trump wrote on Twitter.

Kellyanne Conway, one of the president's senior advisers, offered a similar sentiment on the riots Thursday morning on "Fox and Friends."

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“I don’t even know if they know what they’re protesting,” she said. “Is it the free speech? Having someone maybe on your campus who has a dissenting point of view or wants to present an alternative point of view?”

During the riot, one person wrote "KILL TRUMP" in graffiti.

California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom responded to Trump's funding threat on the president's favorite medium:

The university put the blame for the riots on "150 masked agitators," saying that the other protesters had remained peaceful.

Yiannopoulos took to Facebook after the cancelation, blaming the protests on his political opponents: "The Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down."

Yiannopoulos is an editor at Breitbart, a conservative site that prominently supported Trump, where he has cultivated a provocative and brash political style; his antics surrounding the release of a recent "Ghostbusters" film got him banned from Twitter, after his followers harassed the movie's star Leslie Jones.

Rep. Barbara Lee, of California's 13th district, issued a statement condemning the riots as well as the president's remarks on the issue:

"Milo Yiannopoulos has made a career of inflaming racist, sexist and nativist sentiments. Berkeley has a proud history of dissent and students were fully within their rights to protest peacefully. However, I am disappointed by the unacceptable acts of violence last night which were counterproductive and dangerous," her statement said.

She continued: "President Donald Trump cannot bully our university into silence. Simply put, President Trump's empty threat to cut funding from UC Berkeley is an abuse of power. As a senior member of the education funding subcommittee, I will continue to stand up to President Trump's overreach and defend the rights of our students and faculty."

Mayor Jesse Arreguín also issued a statement condemning the protests and asking for inclusion and peaceful dialogue.

"Unfortunately, last night, a small minority of the protesters who had assembled in opposition to a speaking engagement featuring a prominent white nationalist engaged in violence and property damage. They also provided the ultra-nationalist far right exactly the images they want to use to try to discredit the vast majority of peaceful protesters in Berkeley and across America who are deeply concerned about where our country is heading," it said.

The statement ends on a hopeful note: "For our community to be a beacon of light in these dark times, we must display our values of inclusion, keep each other and our community safe, embrace our right to peacefully assemble, and show the rest of the country our values in both speech and in action."

Thursday morning, Yiannopoulos added to his previous statements on Facebook:

"Last night wasn't a 'protest.' It was a riot," he writes. "A riot not a single prominent left-wing figure will denounce. This is what happens if you're libertarian or conservative and you get too popular and influential. This is what they do to you and your supporters. America, you have to fix this."

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore