In the latest episode of the long-running reality show we call the American Presidency, Donald Trump has decided to pivot from his usual targets—like common decency and the English language—to focus his particular brand of vengeful idiocy on the 'Ivory Tower.' If you haven’t been paying attention, the former and perhaps future leader of the free world has unleashed a series of investigations and what can only be described as a billion-dollar 'shakedown' against American colleges. It’s a match made in hell: a man who views a university degree as a receipt for a four-year ego massage vs. institutions that treat students like high-interest ATM machines with pre-loaded ideological software.

Let’s be clear: there are no heroes here. On one side, we have Trump, a man whose intellectual curiosity begins and ends with the ratings for his own rallies. His 'investigations' into higher education are about as sincere as a lobbyist’s smile. This isn’t about 'academic freedom' or 'protecting students.' This is about a bully realizing that the easiest way to look like a champion of the 'common man' is to punch a nerd in a tweed jacket. By threatening to tax endowments and probing into foreign funding, Trump is merely running a classic protection racket. He’s essentially saying, 'Nice little multi-billion dollar endowment you’ve got there, shame if a federal investigator found out you were taking money from a regime I don’t currently like.' It’s a billion-dollar shakedown masquerading as public policy, and it’s perfectly calibrated for a base that views a library as a suspicious gathering place for people who think they’re better than them.

On the other side of this pathetic arena, we have the American University. These are the institutions that have spent the last half-century transforming from centers of enlightenment into bloated, administrative nightmares. While the 'Left' shrieks about the existential threat to academic inquiry, they conveniently ignore the fact that they’ve turned higher education into a debt-fueled luxury brand. The average university now has more deans of 'Synergistic Outreach' than it has actual professors who can teach a coherent history class. They’ve hoarded billions in tax-exempt endowments while their graduates enter the workforce with the financial prospects of a Victorian chimney sweep. They are the perfect foil for Trump because they are, in many ways, just like him: avaricious, self-important, and fundamentally disconnected from the reality of the people they claim to serve.

The irony—which is a concept entirely lost on both parties—is that Trump’s 'assault' on higher ed is the best thing to happen to these institutions in decades. It allows the tenured elite to retreat into a comfortable crouch of victimhood. They get to pretend they are the noble defenders of truth against a spray-tanned barbarian, rather than what they actually are: an educational cartel that has priced its product into the stratosphere. Instead of addressing the actual rot—the rising tuition, the administrative bloat, the total abandonment of vocational utility—they can just point at a MAGA hat and scream about fascism. It’s a wonderful distraction from the fact that their 'product' is a $200,000 piece of paper that serves mostly as a signal for managerial-class social standing.

And let’s look at the 'investigations' themselves. Trump’s administration has poked at the influence of foreign money on campuses. Is there influence? Of course. Money from autocrats and oil-rich states flows into these universities like water through a sieve. But Trump isn't interested in the ethical implications of a Saudi-funded center for Middle Eastern studies. He’s interested in who hasn't paid his particular toll. It’s a performative purge. He wants to see the deans grovel; he wants to see the liberal arts departments tremble; and most importantly, he wants to see if he can redirect some of that sweet, sweet academic cash toward his own brand of 'patriotic' indoctrination. It’s just one set of propaganda being swapped for another, with the only difference being the font on the brochure.

What we are witnessing is the collision of two different types of rot. It’s the raw, transactional nihilism of the Trumpian Right meeting the sanctimonious, bureaucratic decay of the Academic Left. They deserve each other. While they fight over who gets to define 'truth' or 'value,' the actual students are left holding a bill for a war they didn't ask for and a future they can't afford. The American university system is a crumbling temple, and Trump is the wrecking ball that thinks it’s a construction crane. There is no victory to be found here, only the grim satisfaction of watching two bloated, self-serving entities try to eat each other alive. As usual, the only loser is anyone with a shred of intelligence still watching this farce.