U.S. President Donald Trump. Picture by Pool/ABACA/ABACA/PA Images. All rights reserved.In his first few weeks in office, Donald Trump issued executive orders the way he has been sending out tweets. For a reason: being an active user for years, he has learned from it how to distract. He knows that the best way to cover up a provocative tweet is to issue a dozen more irritating, more brazen, more insane tweets, and people forget about the first one. We all have been with him on this rollercoaster dashing down to the bottom of the abyss, and the speed is such that we hardly get to pause and look around. Sometimes, however, the formula fails, and Trump’s move is so disturbing that people can’t move on. The first travel ban, issued on January 27, was that kind of moment.
The new travel ban came out in March 6, seemingly better articulated and fixed. However, fundamental questions are still in place, and the removal of Iraq from the order, while bringing deserved relief to Iraqi travelers, throws up new ambiguities. Now that the order is ‘updated’, it is timely to take a look at it again, in order to, in Donald Trump’s eloquent words the first time he raised the ban on Muslims, ‘figure out what the hell is going on.’
Behind the selection
While signing the first order, Trump mentioned the lessons he learned from 9/11 and pentagon, omitting the fact that the ban initially included Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen, and none of the hijackers on that day were from those countries. In an interview with David Muir on ABC, he added San Bernardino on the list, carried out by a Chicago born man radicalized in Saudi Arabia, which is not on Trump’s list. Unsurprisingly, Muir let him off the hook without pressing for a less absurd answer.
