Donald Trump started the morning tweeting that:
Secretary Kelly said that all is going well with very few problems.
Which is so reassuring considering ...
Donald Trump acted so swiftly on closing US borders to refugees and people from seven Muslim-majority countries that his new Secretary of Homeland Security, John F. Kelly, found out about it from broadcast news.
Bigotry is such a priority in the Trump regime, that there was no time to run it past the Secretary of Homeland Security. That’s pretty amazing for an order that trump insists was done for the purposes of homeland security. However, it perfectly emblematic for the actual results of Trump's order.
The global confusion that has since erupted is the story of a White House that rushed to enact, with little regard for basic governing, a core campaign promise that Mr. Trump made to his most fervent supporters. In his first week in office, Mr. Trump signed other executive actions with little or no legal review, but his order barring refugees has had the most explosive implications.
It wasn’t just passengers already on flights to the United States who were shocked to find that Trump had acted precipitously, without a moment’s thought for the consequences.
Gen. John F. Kelly, the secretary of homeland security, had dialed in from a Coast Guard plane as he headed back to Washington from Miami. Along with other top officials, he needed guidance from the White House, which had not asked his department for a legal review of the order.
Halfway into the briefing, someone on the call looked up at a television in his office. “The president is signing the executive order that we’re discussing,” the official said, stunned.
So Trump signed a security order that went into effect immediately, before the Secretary of Homeland Security had a chance to even read it. Then, after a weekend in which innocent people were trapped at airports, kept off flights, and even routed back into dangerous areas, Trump turned to that same Secretary, who never got his briefing, to ask how things were going. Perfect.
The tens of thousands who came out to protest from coast to coast might have given Trump some clue that “very few problems” isn’t the description that best fit the situation. But of course, he might not have noticed …
While thousands of Americans protested President Trump’s blacklist against seven majority Muslim countries for a second day on Sunday, and hundreds of travelers were detained for attempting to legally enter the country, Trump sat down to watch Finding Dory with staff and family members.
Why would even Donald Trump act in such haste? The man in charge made him do it.
Mr. Bannon, who believes in highly restrictive immigration policies and saw barring refugees as vital to shoring up Mr. Trump’s political base, was determined to make it happen. He and a small group made up of the president’s closest advisers began working on the order during the transition so that Mr. Trump could sign it soon after taking office.
They’d been working on it during the transition, but apparently never took a moment to get it reviewed by Justice, Homeland Security, or anyone not wearing a Pepe badge.
But then, Bannon had tasks that were keeping him busy. He spent his weekend laying out a line of shells, so Trump can find his way back to the Oval Office.