LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – OCTOBER 28: Republican presidential candidate former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Annual Leadership Summit at The Venetian Resort Las Vegas on October 28, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The summit features the top GOP presidential candidates who will face their first test on the road to the Republican nomination with the Iowa Caucuses on January 15, 2024. (Photo by Ethan Miller/.)
WASHINGTON (NewsNation) — The Biden administration is firing back at former President Donald Trump’s pledge to reinstate the Muslim travel ban if he retakes the White House, saying President Joe Biden was “proud to overturn the vile, un-American Muslim ban.”
Trump on Saturday slammed Biden’s handling of anti-Semitism and illegal immigration in the United States, suggesting that a Muslim travel ban, like the one he enacted as president, could put an end to it.
“Just as I did before, we will keep radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country,” Trump said to applause at the annual Republican Jewish Coalition Event (RJC).
“You remember the travel ban? On day one I will restore our travel ban,” he declared. “We had a travel ban because we didn’t want people coming into our country who really love the idea of blowing, blowing our country up.”
In 2017, Trump signed an executive order temporarily banning travelers from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.
While Trump battled court challenges from the beginning, the Supreme Court upheld the ban, saying he had “ample power” to make national security judgments in the realm of immigration.
Biden overturned his predecessor’s travel ban the first week of his presidency in 2021.
In a statement, White House spokesman Andrew Bates denounced Trump’s latest remarks, saying “the need to come together against rancid hate is more pressing now than ever, as American Muslims and Arab Americans increasingly find themselves the targets of appalling smears and heartbreaking violence.”
“The spike in Islamophobic incidents is a direct attack on the character of our nation. It’s critical that we give hate no safe harbor,” Bates added.
Since the Israel-Hamas war unfolded, the Justice Department said it has been monitoring an increase in reported threats against Muslim, Arab and Jewish communities in the United States.
