President Donald Trump has again criticized the federal judge who issued a temporary restraining order against his proposed travel ban, warning about “bad and dangerous” travelers while protests erupted in cities across the nation and the world in opposition to the president’s policies.
Without presenting any evidence, Trump tweeted “many very bad and dangerous people may be pouring into our country.” (See the tweets below.)
Shortly before that one, the president tweeted: “What is our country coming to when a judge can halt a Homeland Security travel ban and anyone, even with bad intentions, can come into U.S.?”
Last night, federal Judge James Robart issued the TRO, prompting Trump to call him a “so-called judge” earlier today. The White House has said the Department of Justice will defend the president’s executive order.
Trump’s reference to “a Homeland Security travel ban” comes just hours after the Department of Homeland Security itself suspended all actions pertaining to the president’s travel ban order, and the State Department resumed accepting the visas of people arriving from the seven majority-Muslim named in Trump’s executive order.
The latest presidential tweets come on an afternoon when MSNBC and CNN were featuring heavy coverage of the nation’s third consecutive weekend of anti-Trump protests. Today’s rallies in New York City, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Houston, Philadelphia, Miami and West Palm Beach (heading to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida resort, or at least as close as possible) erupted in response to a week of legal back-and-forth over the president’s exec-ordered travel ban.
Worldwide, rallies were held today in Paris, London and Tel Aviv.
While not given the non-stop coverage of the Women’s March on January 21 or last weekend’s airport rallies, today’s significantly smaller protests, along with the Trump tweets, dominated MSNBC and CNN airtime.
Even Fox News interrupted its Houston-based pre-Super Bowl coverage with an exasperated Shepard Smith briefly debating Fox News legal analyst Mercedes Colwin who said the travel ban “was not against a religion.” Said Smith, after assuring viewers that he and Colwin were good friends, “it’s just another name on the same thing. That’s the complaint from those who think this is ridiculous.”
On CNN and MSNBC, coverage shifted from the various protests that included large showings of LGBTQ protesters. In New York, the crowds gathered near the Stonewall Inn, the historic West Village bar that’s become a symbol of gay rights.
The afternoon rally was organized to show LGBTQ solidarity with immigrants and refugees targeted in Trump’s executive order. At one point, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer led the NYC crowd in a “Dump Trump!” chant.
