Former President Obama on Monday encouraged protesters who have been denouncing President Trump’s order suspending immigration from seven countries affected by terrorist movements, and rejected comparisons between that order and his own foreign policy.
“President Obama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country,” his spokesman, Kevin Lewis, said in a Monday statement.
“Citizens exercising their constitutional right to assemble, organize and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake,” he added.
Trump’s order halted immigration from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, and Trump’s team argues that that the vetting processes that U.S. government used during the Obama administration need to be reviewed and improved over the next three months. Those countries were chosen because they were listed as “countries of concern” in a law that passed at the end of 2015 and Obama signed despite an initial veto threat.
The order sparked protests at airports around the country Saturday, after the detention of an Iraqi man who served as an interpreter for the U.S. military and was headed to the United States when the order was issued.
Trump’s allies defended the move by noting that the policy is rooted in a law that passed during his administration and that he suspended an Iraqi refugee program for six months in 2011. “I somehow do not recall the same level of outrage at that time,” Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Penn., said Monday. “It is now, as it was then, within the president’s authority to suspend or halt the admission of people from certain nations in the interest of American national security.”
Such arguments seem to have motivated Obama to pushback against the Trump team. “With regard to comparisons to President Obama’s foreign policy decisions, as we’ve heard before, the president fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion,” Lewis said.
Obama said he would comment on some Trump decisions once he left office, but the statement comes ahead of schedule.
“I want to do some writing. I want to be quiet a little bit and not hear myself talk so darn much. I want to spend precious time with my girls. So those are my priorities this year,” Obama said in his final press conference. “[I]f I saw systematic discrimination being ratified in some fashion . . . I think [that] would be something that would merit me speaking out.”
