Giuliani says Trump asked him how to do a Muslim ban 'legally'
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President Trump sought advice from Rudy Giuliani on how to "legally" implement a "Muslim ban," the former New York City mayor said while speaking with Fox News' Jeanine Pirro Saturday night.
"I'll tell you the whole history of it," Giuliani said. "When he first announced it, he said 'Muslim ban.' He called me up, he said, 'Put a commission together, show me the right way to do it legally.'" Giuliani reported that he assembled a commission of legal experts, "and what we did was we focused on — instead of religion — danger, the areas of the world that create danger for us, which is a factual basis, not a religious basis. Perfectly legal, perfectly sensible."
Though Trump's controversial executive order targets seven majority-Muslim nations, Giuliani is echoing the president's comments from earlier this week that it is "not the Muslim ban." Trump has not specified if he has in mind an additional restriction which would be "the Muslim ban."
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Watch the full conversation between Giuliani and Pirro below. Bonnie Kristian
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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