Pence says the White House will 'use all legal means at our disposal' to reinstate Trump's immigration order

published 5 February 2017

Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday pledged the White House would "use all legal means at our disposal" to reinstate President Trump's immigration executive order, which presently remains suspended thanks to two federal court rulings.

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Pence deflected host Chris Wallace's question about the effectiveness of targeting seven countries that have not produced a deadly attack on American soil since 9/11. "Look, we don't appoint judges to our district courts to conduct foreign policy or to make decisions about our national security," Pence said, insisting the Trump team will "win this argument."

The vice president also made an appearance on ABC's This Week on Sunday, where he tread similar ground, repeating the "all legal means" talking point. "There's simply no question under the Constitution, and frankly under federal law, that the president of the United States has the authority in the interest of national security to determine who has the right to come into this country," Pence argued, though he conceded the point from host George Stephanopoulos — counteracting the foreign policy argument — that "this judge [has] the authority to do what he did."

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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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