Trump defends "travel ban," says DOJ should have stuck with original version
In the wake of the London terror attacks on Saturday, President Trump on Monday posted a series of tweets defending his proposed travel ban on a handful of Muslim-majority nations and claiming that his administration is already practicing "extreme vetting."
Mr. Trump first said that he calls his plan a "travel ban" despite White House pushback against the phrase earlier this year when he first rolled it out.
The president then said that the Justice Department should have appealed a federal court's decision blocking his original travel ban that he authorized via executive order in January that would have imposed a ban on the issuance of new visas to people from six predominantly Muslim nations, indefinitely blocked Syrian refugees from the U.S. and halted the overall refugee program for 120 days.
After the ban was blocked by a federal appeals court, Mr. Trump signed another executive order in early March that excluded Iraq from the list of countries and didn't block Syrian refugees or freeze the overall refugee program.
On Monday, Mr. Trump said that the Justice Department should ask for an "expedited hearing of the watered down travel ban before the Supreme Court," and he said it should seek a "much tougher version." The administration asked the Supreme Court late last week to reinstate the ban.
The president said that the U.S. is already engaged in the "extreme vetting" that he promised on the campaign trail.
