A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.
Conservative media variously endeavored to defend, explain, and excuse President Donald Trump’s executive order banning citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. The move immediately affected refugees, migrants, and even U.S. green-card holders, sparked protests in airports across the country, and prompted a federal judge to issue a stay on part of the order late Saturday night.
A Breitbart headline read:
The post said, “The Council on American-Islamic Relations, aka CAIR, has helped launch a series of protests across the country and plans lawsuits related to President Trump’s recent executive orders on immigration.” CAIR is not a U.S.-designated terror group.
Another Breitbart post characterized district court judge Ann Donnelly, who issued the original stay, as an “Obama-Appointed, Schumer-Allied Judge.”
The Daily Caller said the “Muslim ban” label is a misnomer, writing that the “majority of the world’s Muslims are not affected” by the order:
The three countries with the most Muslims, Indonesia, India and Pakistan, together account for a third of the world’s Muslims. None of the three are included in the visa ban. In fact, only one of the countries affected by the ban, Iran, has more than two percent of the global Muslim population. Iran, where “Death to America and Israel” chants are common, contains just 4.6 percent of the world’s Muslims.
The site also published a post titled “Let’s Be Real, Obama ‘Barred’ Syrian Christian Refugees. Just Look at the Numbers.” The Daily Caller’s homepage currently has no mention of Donnelly’s stay.
The National Review published several posts over the weekend about Trump’s executive order. One evaluated legal particularities of the law and its enforcement, and another argued that people with green cards should be allowed to enter the U.S. Another piece, “Trump’s Executive Order on Refugees — Separating Fact from Hysteria,” defended the key provisions of Trump’s order and said it was not a Muslim ban, but a “dramatic climb-down from his worst campaign rhetoric.”
And yet another National Review post focused on the protests and the backlash to the executive order. It said: “If your only response to these issues is to cry ‘This is just xenophobia and bigotry,’ you’re either not actually paying attention to the facts or engaging in the same sort of intellectual beggary that leads liberals to refuse to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.”
The post, as well as other conservative sites, pointed out that in 2011 the State Department stopped processing Iraqi refugees for six months after a specific case of terrorist infiltration was detected.
On conservative Facebook pages, this Fox News post was shared widely:
