AFP, Washington :
United States President Donald Trump offered US help to Britain in response to reports of three violent incidents including a vehicle mowing down pedestrians on London Bridge. “Whatever the United States can do to help out in London and the U. K., we will be there – WE ARE WITH YOU. GOD BLESS!,” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Earlier, with the situation in London still fluid, Trump seized the occasion to plug his thwarted travel ban on people from six mainly Muslim countries.
The Justice Department on Thursday went to the Supreme Court to ask that it be reinstated immediately after it has been held up repeatedly in lower courts.
Without mentioning the London events specifically, Trump tweeted: “We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!”
Trump has been briefed by his national security team on the London Bridge incident, his spokesman Sean Spicer wrote earlier on Twitter.
The State Department issued a statement condemning what it called “cowardly attacks targeting innocent civilians.”
“We understand UK police are currently treating these as terrorist incidents. The United States stands ready to provide any assistance authorities in the United Kingdom may request,” the statement said.
“All Americans stand in solidarity with the people of the United Kingdom.”
As authorities in Britain scrambled to respond to the knife and truck attacks in the heart of London Saturday night, President Trump’s immediate response was to publicly demand the courts reinstate his executive order restricting travel from six largely Muslim nations. “We need to be smart, vigilant and tough,” tweeted Trump at about 7 p.m. Eastern Time – before news outlets had been able to confirm any significant details about the incident. “We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!”
The Justice Department last week asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the president’s executive order, appealing a lower court’s ruling that upheld a nationwide block of it.
Throughout the legal setbacks the Trump administration has faced on the issue is a consistent theme: judges have pointed to the words of both the president and his advisors in order to rule that the policy has more to do with religious animus toward Muslims than protecting national security.
Central to the administration’s case has been the claim that the order is not a ban but rather a temporary change of vetting rules designed to protect national security. Press secretary Sean Spicer neatly summed up their case in January, shortly after the chaotic rollout of the original policy. “It’s not a Muslim ban. It’s not a travel ban,” said Spicer. “It’s a vetting system to keep America safe.” The courts have consistently disagreed, with the administration’s own words coming back to haunt them time and again. After Trump signed a more delicately-worded second executive order on the subject in March in an attempt to resolve the legal troubles of the original ban, a judge in Hawaii pointed to the words of senior adviser Stephen Miller. In an interview with Fox News, Miller claimed that while the order had been tweaked to respond to judges’ issues, “fundamentally you’re still going to have the same basic policy outcome for the country.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has been fighting the immigration order, noted Trump’s word choice:
United States President Donald Trump offered US help to Britain in response to reports of three violent incidents including a vehicle mowing down pedestrians on London Bridge. “Whatever the United States can do to help out in London and the U. K., we will be there – WE ARE WITH YOU. GOD BLESS!,” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Earlier, with the situation in London still fluid, Trump seized the occasion to plug his thwarted travel ban on people from six mainly Muslim countries.
The Justice Department on Thursday went to the Supreme Court to ask that it be reinstated immediately after it has been held up repeatedly in lower courts.
Without mentioning the London events specifically, Trump tweeted: “We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!”
Trump has been briefed by his national security team on the London Bridge incident, his spokesman Sean Spicer wrote earlier on Twitter.
The State Department issued a statement condemning what it called “cowardly attacks targeting innocent civilians.”
“We understand UK police are currently treating these as terrorist incidents. The United States stands ready to provide any assistance authorities in the United Kingdom may request,” the statement said.
“All Americans stand in solidarity with the people of the United Kingdom.”
As authorities in Britain scrambled to respond to the knife and truck attacks in the heart of London Saturday night, President Trump’s immediate response was to publicly demand the courts reinstate his executive order restricting travel from six largely Muslim nations. “We need to be smart, vigilant and tough,” tweeted Trump at about 7 p.m. Eastern Time – before news outlets had been able to confirm any significant details about the incident. “We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!”
The Justice Department last week asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the president’s executive order, appealing a lower court’s ruling that upheld a nationwide block of it.
Throughout the legal setbacks the Trump administration has faced on the issue is a consistent theme: judges have pointed to the words of both the president and his advisors in order to rule that the policy has more to do with religious animus toward Muslims than protecting national security.
Central to the administration’s case has been the claim that the order is not a ban but rather a temporary change of vetting rules designed to protect national security. Press secretary Sean Spicer neatly summed up their case in January, shortly after the chaotic rollout of the original policy. “It’s not a Muslim ban. It’s not a travel ban,” said Spicer. “It’s a vetting system to keep America safe.” The courts have consistently disagreed, with the administration’s own words coming back to haunt them time and again. After Trump signed a more delicately-worded second executive order on the subject in March in an attempt to resolve the legal troubles of the original ban, a judge in Hawaii pointed to the words of senior adviser Stephen Miller. In an interview with Fox News, Miller claimed that while the order had been tweaked to respond to judges’ issues, “fundamentally you’re still going to have the same basic policy outcome for the country.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has been fighting the immigration order, noted Trump’s word choice:
