News · moment 5 of 12
Mahmoud Khalil, Free Speech, and Deportation
from Little Moments With Meghan Markle | The Tim Dillon Show #435 · #435
9 min
News
Tim discusses the detention of Columbia protester Mahmoud Khalil over alleged Hamas-aligned speech, riffs extensively on how everyone says insane and contradictory things they don't mean (including himself), and questions whether speech alone should be grounds for deportation under Trump's anti-Semitism executive order.
- Tim attended a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA and joked that if the protesters were really Hamas, they would have kidnapped him instead of asking for selfies.
- He argues that detaining people based on speech alone sets a bad legal precedent, even if protesters broke encampment rules.
- Most things people say are insane, and Tim catalogs the threats, lies, and invented realities he's created to hurt people over the years.
- You can't hang someone for saying crazy things; Tim uses his own contradictory stances on Hamas to illustrate how casual political rhetoric can be.
- Everyone supports Hamas occasionally—tenants during rent season, people waiting to hear back from auditions—until circumstances change.
- Khalil served as a student negotiator at Columbia, a role that involved speaking frequently with university officials and the press.
- Tim accepts that foreign nationals who commit crimes can face deportation, but says merely expressing support for Hamas verbally shouldn't be enough.
- He objects to treating every word as if it's being engraved in stone—people say things without meaning them literally.
- Tim questions what Trump's executive order against anti-Semitism actually prohibits and whether it applies only to non-citizens or American citizens too.
- The executive order banning anti-Semitism strikes him as unusual, and he's unclear on whether it provides grounds for deportation.
Mahmud KhilHamasColumbia UniversityDonald TrumpElon MuskUCLABenjamin Netanyahu