President Trump bashed the Hawaii judge who placed a temporary restraining order on his second, re-worded travel ban, while speaking to a large crowd in Nashville, Tennessee.
The judge cited Trump's promise of a Muslim ban during the election, saying that it could be seen as a violation of the First Amendment to the free practice of religion.
"I know you people aren't skeptical people," Trump told the crowd. "Because no one would be that way in Tennessee, not Tennessee. You don't think this was done by a judge for political reasons, do you? No," he said sarcastically.
"This ruling makes us look weak! Which by the way, we no longer are, believe me, just look at our borders," citing the drop in illegal crossings reported recently.
"We're gonna fight this terrible ruling, we're gonna take our case as far as it needs to go, including all the way up to the Supreme Court," he promised.
"We're going to win," he told the roaring crowd. "We're going to keep our citizens safe. And regardless, we're going to keep our citizens safe, believe me."
Trump slams the court ruling blocking the new travel ban: “This ruling makes us look weak" https://t.co/Yfipma8NR5 https://t.co/Pj57moSrgj
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) March 16, 2017
Trump read to the crowd a statute from immigration law that he believed gave him the power to institute the travel ban, saying, "So we have a lot of lawyers here. We also have a lot of smart people here. Let me read to you directly from the federal statute."
"212F, of the immigration," he interrupted himself, "and you know what I'm talking about right? Can I read this to you? Listen to this. Now we're all smart people, we're good students, we're all everything. Some are bad students but even if you're a bad student, this is a real easy one, let me tell you."
Ready, so here's the statute, which they don't even want to quote, when they overrule it. And it was put here for the security of our country. And this goes beyond me, because there'll be other presidents. And we need this. And sometimes we need it very badly for security, security of our country.It says, now listen how easy this is: "Whenever the president finds that the entry of any aliens or any class of aliens would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may, by proclamation and for such period as he," see it wasn't politically correct because they should have said he or she, y'know today they'd say that. But that's all right. Actually, that's the only mistake they made. "As he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or suspend the class of aliens, as immigrants or non-immigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens, any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."
"In other words, if he thinks there's danger out there," he said, "he or she, whoever is president can say, 'I'm sorry folks, not now, please, we got enough problems.' "
Trump calls federal judge's block of the new travel ban "judicial overreach" https://t.co/YZ32bCBsdM https://t.co/CmnGlC0M2Y
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) March 16, 2017
He argued that the order would survive, citing an authority on the law.
Even liberal Democratic lawyer, Alan Dershowitz just said that we would win this case before the Supreme Court of the United States. Remember this — I wasn't thrilled, but the lawyers all said, 'Oh, lets tailor it.'
"This is a watered down version of the first one," he told the crowd. "This is a watered down version."
President Trump calls new travel ban "a watered down version of the first one" https://t.co/YZ32bCBsdM https://t.co/pAlbOSk3Zp
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) March 16, 2017
Trump first travel ban was also halted by a restraining order after several states challenged the order. After saying he would fight it in the Supreme Court, Trump backed down and decided to rewrite the order. Among the changes in the re-written ban was the dropping of Iraq from the list of restricted countries.
Rep. Trey Gowdy had said that the first order was poorly worded, and that the president likely got bad legal advice from his staff.
The second travel ban was set to go into effect Thursday, before the restraining order was imposed.
