Trump’s Executive Order Is Not A Travel Ban, Says Press Secretary Sean Spicer
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer says that Donald Trump’s executive order is not a travel ban. This was a reaction to media reports claiming that the action set in motion for the next three months was unconstitutional and racially unfair.
The truth is that the act which the executive order is based on was actually signed into existence by former president Barack Obama. This is also the second time it’s been put in action. According to a report by the Washington Times, Obama enacted the same order in 2012, but it wasn’t strict enough to keep terrorist Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab from coming to U.S. soil and admitting on social media that he had already committed such war crimes in Syria.
Having returned to Syria in 2013, Al-Jayab reportedly joined a terrorist group and posted, “America will not isolate me from my Islamic duty. Only death will do us part.”
This was before returning to U.S. soil the following January and settling in Sacramento.
Obama’s initial order proved somewhat ineffective due to the fact that Al-Jayab had been among the first Iraqi refugees allowed into the United States after a six-month freeze. This means that the instant Donald Trump’s executive order is loosened for Syrian refugees, more potential terrorist-friendly people will likely be the first in line to take the opportunity for revenge. History does tend to repeat itself.
Obama only listed the nations affected due to their high-risk potential for terrorist immigrants and has stated he is not Muslim for the record. Spicer claims that Obama’s attempt failed drastically and that there is no way of really knowing who could be a threat.
“The choice is either to keep out some legitimate travelers or to allow in some jihad mass murderers. There is no viable third alternative.”
Spicer also added that the executive order is not a travel ban and that the word “ban” was only used because it was a popular term spread by the press, and he blames the media for President Donald Trump using it repeatedly. According to the Hill, Spicer claims it is simply a vetting process to keep out potential threats and ensure the United States’ safety from potential jihad immigrants.
“It can’t be a ban if you’re letting a million people in. If 325,000 people from another country can come in, that is by nature not a ban. It is extreme vetting.”
Trump has stated that the vetting process was long overdue, possibly referring to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That happened when his Republican predecessor George W. Bush had been in office for less than a year. Airline security has been tightened ever since, to the point that at one time you couldn’t even bring bottled water in your carry-on luggage because it might be a part of a chemical compound for a bomb.
Much of the shock from Friday’s order came from the fact that President Donald Trump didn’t really communicate his intentions clearly beforehand. He defended it on Twitter by claiming that if he’d given a week’s notice, “a lot of bad dudes” would come to the United States in that week. In that way, the short notice was intentional, though it parallels the actions of Richard Nixon, who had ordered wiretapping without communicating with the rest of the government first.
This likely led to the existence of the NSA, but it got Nixon in a lot of trouble early on.
The origin of the word “ban” being used to describe Trump’s executive order actually began with the New York Times, according to Fox News. In a press exchange between Spicer and NBC News’ Kristen Welker, the offending report had spawned a viral use of the word, and the public latched onto it.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer says Trump’s “extreme vetting” may have been a shock to everyone, but don’t call it a “travel ban.”
[Featured Image by Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock]
