Conway: Media ‘emboldened’ Berkeley protesters

Kellyanne Conway said early Thursday that violent protests at the University of California, Berkeley, are the latest example of unrest partially fueled by the media.

UC Berkeley initiated a campuswide lockdown late Wednesday after demonstrations broke out against a scheduled speech there by Breitbart senior editor Milo Yiannopoulos.

“What’s going on out there is what’s going on all across the country,” Conway, a top aide to President Trump, said on Fox News’s “Fox and Friends” Thursday.

{mosads}“You have protesters who feel very emboldened,” added Conway, who served as Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign manager. “They’ve got media cameras following them; they give interviews.

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

Conway said students lashing out at Yiannopoulos, who is a popular figure with the alt-right, are in for a rude awakening upon graduation.

“In the real world, when these kids grow up and try to find jobs — which they will in the Trump economy — [they’ll see] life doesn’t work that way, folks.”

Yiannopoulos blamed the cancellation it on “violent left-wing protestors.”

“One thing I do know for sure: The Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down,” he wrote on Facebook.

Trump, meanwhile, threatened to cut Berkeley’s federal funding Thursday if the California campus “does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view.”