2017 Feb 5^th

The president is now even unhappier than he was yesterday when “so called judge” Hobart of Washington put a stay on his halt to immigration.. Trump asked for an immediate stay on Hobart’s order staying his ban. If this now sounds like a comic opera plot it is because it is a comic opera lot…although it wasn’t intended to be.

To hear the Trumpeters talk about this prohibition we are all of us in mortal danger every hour his ban on immigrants is delayed. When the ban was at least temporarily lifted a mini-flood of happy relatives began arriving. The news showed grandmothers happily greeting their daughters and grandchildren. (Of course we all know these elderly Muslim women were surely hiding Kalashnikovs under their coats.)

Vice President Pence was a guest on “Meet the Press” and he maintained a long face as he spoke of the dreadful dangers Americans faced from terrorists and of the president’s desire to make America safe again. He went into chilling detail about the terrible atrocities committed only a few days ago by a terrorist at the Louvre just outside Paris. At that point Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press” reminded Vice President Pence that the terrorist at the Louvre was Egyptian and that Egyptians were not part of the president’s ban. Then Pence did what every good politician is trained to do; he changed the subject.

Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to the president, presented us with an interesting bit of fiction. She referred to the Bowling Green Massacre, another alt-fact. When it was pointed out, non-too gently, that no such massacre had occurred, Kellyanne claimed that she had miss-spoken ”one word” she had meant to say Bowling Green terrorists instead of Bowling Green massacre. But she had gone on to claim that this non-event had not been covered by the press. But the fact was that two terrorists had been arrested in Bowling Green for providing weapons to foreign terrorists and that event had produced some 90 stories in the press; the massacre had not been covered because it didn’t happen.

Conway also reiterated claims from Trump that his refugee policy is similar to “what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months.” Conway said it was “brand new information” to people that Obama enacted a “six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program.” Breitbart also reported this week that “Obama suspended Iraq refugee program for six months over terrorism fears in 2011.”

As the Washington Post reported, that was not the case. Obama administration officials told The Post that there was never a point when Iraqi resettlement was stopped or banned. In the aftermath of the arrests of the two Iraqis living in Kentucky, the Obama administration imposed more extensive background checks on Iraqi refugees, and the new screening procedures created a dramatic slowdown in visa approvals.

State Department records show there was a significant drop in refugee arrivals from Iraq in 2011, The Post’s Glenn Kessler reported. There were 18,251 in 2010, 6,339 in 2011 and 16,369 in 2012. One news report said the “pace of visa approvals” had “slowed to a crawl,” indicating some were still being approved.

Perhaps there should be a prize for the best fiction from a White House flunky…only one entry per contestant please.