Trump’s tweets may hurt government’s case for travel ban

World Today

U.S. President Donald Trump is using the London attacks to push his stalled order restricting U.S. entry for citizens of several Muslim majority countries.

CGTN’s Nathan King reports from the White House. 

As London was reacting to the terror attacks on Sunday the U.S. President reacted on Twitter- instead of first expressing sympathy and solidarity-  his first tweet was to justify his controversial plans for a travel ban targeting citizens from mainly Muslim countries.

It continued Monday – The President tweeting: “The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, the politically correct version they submitted to S.C. (Supreme Court).”

The tweet wasn’t just controversially politically but legally too- his travel ban has been blocked by the courts partly because Trump and his associates have called it a ban, and that it may be targeted broadly at Muslims. After an uproar at airports in February, it was amended.

White House official’s scrambled to defend their boss.

“The danger is extremely clear the law is very clear and the need for this exec order is very clear,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, deputy White House Press Secretary said. “And the president’s priority in protecting the American people is very clear.”

But the U.S. President also used social media to criticize the London Mayor Saddiq Khan- in the wake of the attacks the U.S. President took the Mayor’s statement about increased police presence as no reason for alarm out of context and tweeted that everyone should be alarmed after a terror attack. Khan, London’s first Muslim leader brushed off the comments and the White House had to clean up another mess.

“I don’t see that the president is picking a fight with the mayor of London at all. Again I think the president point is something he said frankly about 2.5 years ago when the president said national security,” Sanders said.

Expect the controversial tweets to continue. The White House acknowledges that the President sees social media as an important communication tool. It’s downplaying the significance of the tweets and telling media outlets they should not pay too much attention to them. That won’t happen. As President of the United States, everything Trump says or writes has global implications.