Longmont resident and President Donald Trump voter Russ Boehm says the news media has misreported Trump’s recent executive order that temporarily keeps people from certain countries from entering the United States and bars Syrian refugees indefinitely as being a “travel ban.”
Boehm, 73, and a retired engineer at IBM, says it is not.
“If you read the executive order, there is no travel ban,” Boehm said. “There is a 90-day restriction. It’s not a travel ban. It’s a travel restriction for 90 days while they determine an adequate vetting process.”
Trump signed three immigration-related executive orders last month, but the one that temporarily bars all refugees as well as entry by citizens of seven majority Muslim countries and bars Syrian refugees indefinitely has gained the most notoriety, with many critics calling it racist, which Boehm says isn’t the case.
“You can label anyone a racist and that’s just popping your mouth off and saying (Trump) is racist,” he said. “I don’t think calling people names does any good. I don’t think it makes sense for people who lost the election to make accusations.”
Boulder County resident Charlie Danaher, 54, a mechanical engineer, also voted for Trump and doesn’t think the accusation that the order is racist or bigoted is fair, because it suggests the order is coming from a place of hostility and prejudice when it is putting “practical measures to defend the country.” He said the election created “manufactured hysteria” that Trump is racist.
“Someone would have to be irresponsible to believe our country isn’t being threatened by radicals,” Danaher said. “To call it bigoted is just politics for starters, but it’s also irrational.”
Trump’s executive order saw almost instant court challenges, and a federal judge temporarily barred its enforcement on Friday.
The White House has declared it will seek an emergency stay of that ruling, but that had not occurred by 10 p.m. Saturday night.
The order has also sparked protests nationwide on the streets and also last week at airports when people were being detained by border agents, but it is arguably a much scaled-back version of what Trump offered in campaign promises and remarks.
Those included a call for a total ban on Muslims entering the United States, surveillance of mosques and an expressed openness to a database of all Muslims living in the U.S.
The country is divided in its opinion of the order. The Hill reported on Friday that a CBS poll indicated a 51 percent disapproval of the order and temporary refugee ban and a 45 percent approval. In the same article, however, it reported that the more right-leaning Rasmussen Reports found in its own survey that a majority of voters approve of the order.
In mostly liberal Boulder County — where Hillary Clinton took 70 percent of the vote in the 2016 election — the disapproval of the order is likely much higher.
Nevertheless, Trump took 22 percent of the vote here, which translates to more than 41,000 votes.
Erie resident Gene Young voted for Trump and said that he doesn’t believe the travel ban was being directed at Muslims but at countries that sponsor terrorists. He contends it has been misreported in the media, specifically, because it has been referred to as a “ban.”
“It’s not a ban on Muslims,” he said. “It’s a temporary cease on letting them come in and letting them examine the vetting they do before they allow people to come in.”
Young added that there are “40-some other Muslim countries we are still allowing immigration from,” so it’s unfair to say that the executive order is based on religion.
“We as a country have a right to determine who comes in here,” he said. “Just to say we are going to have an open border is not going to work. We have a right to say who can come and when they can come.”
John Bear: 303-473-1355, bearj@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/johnbearwithme
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