Sen. Patrick Leahy Thursday praised President Donald Trump for remaining off Twitter and avoiding most off-the-cuff remarks on his trip to the Middle East and Europe.
And Leahy, D-Vt., advised Trump to drop efforts to impose a travel ban on several Muslim-majority nations that has been blocked by the courts.
Trump is in Europe preparing to attend the G7 conference following stops in the Middle East that have been widely viewed as successful.
“I saw with great pleasure that he stayed on script,” Leahy said during an interview on C-SPAN’s Newsmakers program. “I don’t know if he wrote the script but he stayed on script.”
Trump has been mostly absent from Twitter since leaving the United States, which is another good thing, Leahy said.
“He didn’t have the middle of the night tweets on nuclear war, or who I’m going to ban. And that’s good.”
The Trump administration received the news Thursday that a federal appeals court in Richmond declined to reinstate the travel ban imposed in January and revised later to narrow the scope after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked it.
Leahy said he believes if the case is appealed to the Supreme Court, the administration will lose, despite the recent seating of Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, a conservative pick.
Leahy said the travel ban was carried out in a blanket fashion and was aimed at upholding a Trump campaign pledge to ban Muslims from entering the country.
“The question the administration wants to ask itself is, do they really want to put it before the Supreme Court?” Leahy said. “Even a conservative Supreme Court would have to rule the same way. If I was advising them as counsel, I’d advise them, Ok, you lost twice. Two prestigious courts of appeal. You lost. Let it go.”
The administration seems unlikely to follow this suggestion. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced plans to appeal to the Supreme Court Thursday evening.
