President Trump’s campaign appears to have scrubbed the 2015 press release calling for a halt on Muslim immigration to the United States following a reporter’s question on Monday — as well as all its other campaign statements.
“Minutes after we asked the WH why the President’s campaign website still calls for a Muslim ban, it appears the statement was deleted,” ABC News’s Cecilia Vega wrote on Twitter.
The “Muslim ban,” which was announced in December of 2015 during Trump’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination, has been the subject of strong controversy. The section of Trump’s site holding campaign “Statements” is now bare, as are those for “Announcements,” “Endorsements” and “Ads.”
Vega asked White House press secretary Sean Spicer about the proposal during Monday’s briefing.
“If this White House is no longer calling this a Muslim ban, as the president did initially, why does the president’s website still explicitly call for ‘preventing Muslim immigration’ and it says ‘Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,’” Vega asked Spicer.
Spicer said he was aware of what was on the campaign website but insisted the administration’s policy is a travel ban based on nationality, not religion.
“It’s in this country’s national security interest to make sure that people who are coming in here are coming in here with the right motives and reasons and that we’re having a public safety aspect to making sure that we’re protecting our people,” Spicer said in response.
“We’ve been very consistent since the first day of this administration on this.”
When Vega pushed Spicer about the press release, Spicer maintained that “the intent of the travel ban was very clear.”
The 2015 press release had called “for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives and figure out what is going on.”
The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals is hearing oral arguments on Monday for Trump’s revised travel ban, which called for a 120-day halt on all refugee resettlement and a 90-day pause on immigrants from six Muslim-majority countries entering the United States.
Trump signed a revised travel ban in March after a federal judge placed a nationwide halt on his initial executive order. A federal judge in Hawaii placed a nationwide block on the second travel ban on March 15.