President Donald Trump has signed a new executive order banning travellers from the same Muslim-majority nations that he banned the first time around (minus Iraq), and this time he’s doing things a little differently so the federal courts won’t just block it again. For once, he’s thinking rationally and not just acting on impulse, and unfortunately, it’s for all the wrong causes and reasons, so that’s just great.
Trump is learning from what happened last time
Last time Trump banned Muslims from his country, the ban went into effect straight away, and it confused airlines and customs officials and travellers were left stranded from their home in the US like back when the Berlin Wall was constructed, so it was a shambles.
This time, as promised by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (whose name is Rex, by the way, so let’s take a moment to consider that), the ban will be put into effect in an “orderly” way and won’t actually be in place until 16 March, so that gives the 99.994% of Muslims who aren’t terrorists and the 0.006%% who are a couple of weeks to get their affairs in order.
Tillerson’s address on the topic was very heavy on the terrorism aspect, but we all know he’s just substituting the word “Muslim” for “terrorist” in these sentiments. It’s so thin. He said that “threats to our security continue to evolve and change,” and, for some reason, he thinks that “common sense dictates” this absurd travel ban. He acknowledged that “no system can be made completely infallible,” because not all Muslims are terrorists and not all terrorists are Muslims, so there is still a huge risk of attack, but neither Tillerson nor Trump wants to accept that and will continue living in the fantasy land where Muslims are the bad guys in every scenario.
Tillerson told the American people to have “high confidence” in their (extreme) “vetting process,” saying that the goal with it is to “keep terrorists from entering our country.”
Trump has also announced that the FBI are investigating 300 refugees who have been found to have links to the Islamic State, coincidentally on the same day that Trump signed this executive order, as a way to get people on board with the travel ban.
However, it looks very desperate and will probably change no one’s opinion of the ban. Many law officials are already threatening legal action against the ban, and it will no doubt be blocked like the last one very soon, because Iraq or no Iraq, it’s still unconstitutional. It's like history repeating itself, except it's history from a couple of weeks ago.
