Donald Trump has been left red faced - or he would have been, had he any concept of shame - after it was pointed out that his campaign website was still calling for “preventing Muslim immigration”. This, even as his representatives insisted in court that the US President’s controversial executive order was not a “Muslim ban”.
The White House has consistently denied that Trump’s February order temporarily banning entry to the US from six majority-Muslim nations is religiously motivated.
This was a message that was marched out again on Monday as the US Justice Department appealed against the suspension by a Maryland judge of a second executive order on immigration, introduced after the first also faced legal issues.
"This is not a Muslim ban," Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall confidently asserted while defending the executive order against claims of discrimination at an appeals hearing in Virginia.
However, his argument was undermined somewhat when across the country in Washington ABC journalist Cecilia Vega brought it to the attention of White House press secretary Sean Spicer, and the whole world, that the President’s campaign website was still calling for a Muslim ban.
Needless to say, the statement was quickly removed.
Minutes after we asked the WH why the President's campaign website still called for a Muslim ban, it appears the statement was deleted. pic.twitter.com/1VzefJuoQF
— Cecilia Vega (@CeciliaVega) May 8, 2017
Trump’s December 2015 call for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” had formed a central part of the businessman’s successful presidential campaign. The anti-Islam rhetoric was only toned down as his early executive orders hit upon legal challenges from federal judges across the US.
This latest evidence of the Trump administration’s clanging hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness has inevitably drawn yet more vitriol from his critics.
The Trump administration removed reference to a Muslim ban from their website the day before the court case about the EO. Who they fooling? https://t.co/CTmdEjLEHA
— Hend Amry (@LibyaLiberty) May 9, 2017
heard TROMP deleted his statement on muslim ban trying to say it DIDNT HAPPEN. too bad he accently left up url name https://t.co/0m4EjE58ap pic.twitter.com/bBqp2qbHff
— Chuck Tingle (@ChuckTingle) May 9, 2017
Trump: you can delete a webpage while your case is in court, but you can't just delete the bigotry behind the #MuslimBan. #NoMuslimBanEver pic.twitter.com/kBcAuJClea
— ACLU National (@ACLU) May 8, 2017
The Trump camp has had 16 months to delete the Muslim ban stmt, yet they chose to do it at the very moment everyone would be looking for it.
— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) May 8, 2017
Federal judges were divided in opinion at the hearing on Monday. "He's never repudiated what he said about the Muslim ban," Judge Robert B. King argued, while Judge Paul V. Niemeyer asked "if some other candidate had won the election and issued this order, I gather you would have no problem with that."
RA
