Steve Schmidt, former campaign manager for Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain’s bid for president, argued that the Supreme Court’s Tuesday ruling upholding President Trump’s travel ban was a “fulfillment of Osama bin Laden’s vision.”
“Today was a fantastic fulfillment of Osama bin Laden’s vision by Donald J. Trump,” Schmidt said on MSNBC’s Tuesday broadcast of “Deadline: White House.” “What Osama bin Laden hoped to provoke was a war of civilization. A war between the West and 1 billion Muslims, and so what Donald Trump and this Muslim ban signaled to the world is that Muslims are not welcome here, that this is whether the conservative justices say that, in fact, this is about executive power, the president’s clear intent was to impose a religious test and that is as fundamentally un-American as anything that he’s done over the course of this presidency.”
“The only force in the world that has the power to defeat extremist Islamic radicalism is moderate Islam and moderate Islam was dealt a big setback today by the shortsighted, dangerous policy that, again, abrogates all the fine traditions of our country from freedom of religion, to welcoming the renewal of the country’s lifeblood with immigration,” he added.
[READ: Supreme Court upholds Trump’s travel ban: Full opinion]
The comments come after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in support of Trump’s travel ban that restricts entry to the U.S. for foreign nationals from seven countries, most of which have Muslim-majority populations.
“The proclamation is expressly premised on legitimate purposes: preventing entry of nationals who cannot be adequately vetted and inducing other nations to improve their practices,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “The text says nothing about religion.”
He added that the government “set forth a sufficient national security justification” for the executive order to be upheld.
Critics of the travel ban argued that the policy went against the Constitution and that it discriminated based on religion.
Trump meanwhile praised the decision.
“SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS TRUMP TRAVEL BAN. Wow!” he tweeted Tuesday morning.
SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS TRUMP TRAVEL BAN. Wow!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 26, 2018
