Trump campaign deletes statement on Muslim ban after reporter asks about it

pulse

May 8, 2017 8:33 PM

The statement was deleted from the website shortly after press secretary Sean Spicer was asked about it.

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A statement calling for a "complete and total shutdown" of Muslims entering the US was apparently removed from President Donald Trump's official campaign website after a reporter asked about it at a press briefing on Monday.

Cached pages from Archive.org confirmed that the statement was on Trump's campaign website on Monday morning, but it seems to have disappeared after ABC News' Cecilia Vega asked White House press secretary Sean Spicer about the wording.

"The White House is no longer calling this a Muslim ban, as the president did initially," Vega said. "Why does the president's website still explicitly call for 'preventing Muslim immigration'?"

Spicer said he was not aware of what was on the Trump campaign's website but that since Trump's first day in office the administration had referred to the immigration crackdown as a "travel ban" implemented in the US's national-security interests.

"We've been very consistent since the first day of this administration on this," Spicer said.

Vega said the administration had insisted Trump's executive order was not a travel ban.

The original order, signed in January, sought to block people from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the US. It has since been revised and is being contested in court after a judge in Hawaii blocked it. The three-member 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to hear a case on the judge's injunction on Monday.

The idea behind executive order was part of Trump's campaign platform, and people colloquially referred to it as a travel ban or Muslim ban. When Trump signed the order, the administration balked at characterizing it as such.

"Is it worth standing here, though, and completely disavowing the use of that phrase, 'Muslim ban'?" Vega said on Monday. "I mean, if it's still on the website, if the president's words were being used against him in court today, is it worth you clarifying that once and for all."

Spicer said that he didn't see a need to clarify.

"I think the intent of the travel ban was very clear," he said. "I think it was something the president made very clear in the filings that we have filed — why he did it, the motives for doing it — and it was very clear when he spoke about it from the beginning.

"So there really shouldn't be any question as to why the president's doing this in the idea of making sure that we're putting the safety of our country and our people first and foremost."

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