Promised Immigration Order, Demonstrating Ignorance

Over the weekend, Trump made good on his promise to restrict Muslim immigration and increase vetting. As with most of what he did in week one, this was following through on clearly made campaign promises. The nation has become so expectant in campaign promises being completely meaningless, or just out and out lies, following through on them is shocking!  (eg BO, "I'll close Gitmo on day one!". "If you like your health insurance you can keep it!"). It's now a shock to the nation to see a successful candidate do what they said they would do.

There were demonstrators out in Rochester and accross the country, special call in shows on NPR, and the lefties on Facebook blew up in anger, sadness, fear, etc. Over?

So what do we need to know about this order?

1. Like anything in the first week or two of a new president's adminstration, it is largely based on things that BO either did or did not do during his administration. He did a similar ban on Iraqi refugees in 2011, he discriminated against Christians (Trump is mildly reversing that).
2. The "ban" is TEMPORARY, and the kinds of numbers Trump is talking about are very much in line with historic US immigration. Yes, BO was opening the floodgates to Muslims and excluding Christians ... and the left loved it. This is one of the reasons Trump won.
   
   "On the whole, 2016 was the first time in a decade when the United States let in more Muslim than Christian refugees, 38,901 overall, 75 percent of them from Syria, Somalia, and Iraq, all countries on Trump’s list — and all countries in which the United States has been actively engaged in drone strikes or ground combat over the past year. Obama had been planning to dramatically expand that number, to 110,000, in 2017 — only after he was safely out of office."
3. What he is doing is in line with what he has done all through the campaign, written about in his books, and used during his business career -- staking out a position beyond what he expects to get and negotiating. Scott Adams covers that in detail here. 

Most people are completely unaware that BO executed a similar order in 2011 because BO did it, so it HAD to be good!

I highly recommend to read the Adams link. While I am still not convinced that Trump is playing 3-dimensional chess while the rest of the world is stuck on Tic-Tac-Toe, it IS possible.

1. You start the negotiation by throwing a cherry bomb into the room -- because it puts everyone off guard and it makes them LOOK at you.
   
2. You take a position that 70-80% will think is "crazy", but 20-30% will think "did not go far enough" -- eg, why not Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries as well? The 20-30% will see the rest of the world going nuts over what they think is not enough and realize that Trump tried very hard to give them what they wanted, but it was a bridge too far.
   
3. Because everyone is looking at you and thinks you are crazy, things will come out that would not have otherwise; BO's Iraq order, the discrimination against Christians, the fact that BO had radically increased Muslim immigration on the books for this year, what our historic rates have been, etc. 

I would like Trump to do a speech focused on the the 40K over the last decade and the over 100K planned for this year alone and say; "BO pulled the pin on an immigration bomb and left it in the Oval Office. I fell on it as soon as I found it and there is collateral damage. I can live with that, my mission is to protect the American Peoople."

Much like during the campaign, the most entertaining thing about Trump is to watch the fireworks. I've always enjoyed fireworks!