MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, USA - Former US President Donald Trump for months has been telling people close to him that he plans to bring back his infamous “Muslim ban” if he’s reelected in 2024, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, write Asawin Suebsaeng, Adam Rawnsley in the Rolling Stone.
Banning Muslims from entering the United States is a longstanding obsession of Trump’s. In December 2015, during the GOP presidential primary, he called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” He took a step toward that vision just a few days after taking office, when he signed an executive order banning the entry of citizens from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq for 90 days.
The ban caused chaos and confusion at U.S. airports and ports of entry, and led to a diplomatic fallout with Iraq, where the U.S. still had thousands of troops deployed. Federal courts blocked the initial order, but in 2018 the Supreme Court narrowly approved a subsequent revision of the ban — which included the addition of largely non-Muslim countries such as North Korea and Venezuela to the list of countries subject to tighter restrictions. President Joe Biden reversed the executive order in one of his first executive orders after taking office.
But the former president appears to be unsatisfied with merely reinstating the ban as it existed during his presidency. More recently, Trump has privately discussed adding more countries, including Afghanistan, to the list of majority-Muslim countries whose citizens he’s seeking to ban from the United States.
The hints of Trump’s interest in a reinvigorated travel ban are noticeable in his recent speeches, although they haven’t received much public scrutiny.
The pitch for an even more expansive travel ban is just one part of Trump’s vision of a second term as a vengeance tour against his enemies and the favored targets of the right. Over the past few months, Trump has proposed bringing back firing squads and mass executions, fantasizing about journalists being raped in prison, and bombing Mexico.
