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You have to read this Hawaii judge’s Donald Trump smack-down

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By Katie King on

President’s latest immigration ban has been temporarily blocked

A federal judge in Hawaii has temporarily frozen Donald Trump’s latest travel ban, and the judgment is pretty brutal.

Embedded in full below, Derrick K. Watson’s 43-page judgment concludes by imposing a “temporary restraining order” on the President’s executive order, which sought to suspend the admission of new refugees into the United States of America. The order also halted the issuance of new visas to citizens from six mostly Muslim countries.

This newest order was different in a number of ways to the first travel ban made by Trump (which too was duly halted by a number of courts). For starters, it impacted citizens from six countries instead of seven (Iraq was knocked off the list) and did not apply to current visa holders.

But that didn’t stop Watson blocking the ban and, to reach his conclusion, he dragged out previous anti-Muslim comments made by the Republican businessman.

For example, at page 33 of his scathing opinion, Watson quoted Trump as saying, “I think Islam hates us,” in a March 2016 interview. The judge — who was nominated to sit on the bench by President Barack Obama — continued:

Mr Trump was asked, ‘Is there a war between the West and radical Islam, or between the West and Islam itself?’ He replied: ‘It’s very hard to separate. Because you don’t know who’s who.’

Over the page, Watson laid into Trump even more when he slapped down his legal team’s warning against looking into the “veiled psyche” and “secret motives” of government decision-makers. He said:

[T]here is nothing ‘veiled’ about this press release: ‘Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.’

Ouch!

Read the full judgment in all its glory here:

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