President Trump's chaotic Muslim ban wasn't even discussed with his secretary of homeland security, but Rudy Giuliani knew about it

As a Trump friend revealed he wanted a ban on Muslims, the Trump administration's order led to chaos

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published January 30, 2017 1:04PM (EST)

 (Getty/Ralph Freso)
(Getty/Ralph Freso)

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani bragged to Fox News on Saturday that President Donald Trump asked him for advice on making a "Muslim ban" legal.

"I’ll tell you the whole history of it: When he first announced it, he said ‘Muslim ban,'" Giuliani told Fox News. "He called me up, he said, ‘Put a commission together, show me the right way to do it legally.’"

The president himself, not surprisingly, was active on Twitter over the weekend and through Monday morning promoting his Muslim ban.

Despite Trump's willingness to confide in Giuliani and vent on Twitter, one person who was not apprised of his planned Muslim ban was Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, who was in the middle of a conference call discussing Trump's executive order on Muslim immigration while the president was signing it, according to a report by The New York Times on Sunday. Kelly was later forced to issue a statement declaring that lawful permanent residents would be granted a waiver to enter this country in order to clarify the minutiae of a policy about which he was in the process of being informed at the moment it was implemented.

Controversy has also emerged over the countries which made it on Trump's banned list — and, more notably, the ones which were left off of it. While Trump had no problem banning immigration from predominantly Muslim countries with which he has no business ties — including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — he did not include nations like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, with which he does have business ties. This is notable because, although no Americans were killed by nationals from the banned countries between 1975 and 2015, nearly 3000 Americans have been killed by the three that Trump kept off of the list.

Even as Jihadis celebrate Trump's Muslim ban as proof that America is indeed at war against Islam, and innocent Muslims' lives are destroyed by the ban, the Trump administration is thinking of taking things even further. There are now rumors that they're talking about requiring all foreign visitors to hand over their cell phone numbers and list of websites and social media sites they visit, according to a report on Sunday by CNN.

 


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Donald Trump Immigration John Kelly Muslim Ban Racism Rudy Giuliani