Donald Trump started his daily tweet storm with a claim that
Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning. Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer outage, protesters and the tears of Senator Schumer. Secretary Kelly said that all is going well with very few problems. MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN!
There are a few problems with that. Not only did Secretary Kelly not even know the order was being signed until he saw it on TV, Trump was also apparently getting everything he knows directly from the Fox News chyron. The actual number of people trapped by his ill-planned order is considerably higher.
A senior Department of Homeland Security official said Saturday that in the first 23 hours the order was in effect, 375 people had been detained on arrival in the U.S., prevented from boarding flights at their point of departure or intercepted while en route to the U.S.
That Delta outage didn’t occur until Sunday evening, so it’s unclear how it contributed to problems which began on Saturday morning. And if Chuck Schumer was crying about anything, it was surely about how Trump’s order is a historic low-mark for the nation.
The targeting of nations that are overwhelmingly Muslim recalls some of the darker moments of American history … historic parallels could include the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the witch hunts by Senator Joseph McCarthy against alleged communists in politics and the arts in the 1950s.
But if Trump failed to plan, or even let Homeland Security know what Bannon had cooked up. He had a reason.