Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Saturday that President Trump had asked him how to legally implement a “Muslim ban.”
“I’ll tell you the whole history of it: When he first announced it, he said ‘Muslim ban,'” Giuliani said Saturday on Fox News.
“He called me up, he said, ‘put a commission together, show me the right way to do it legally.'”
But Giuliani argued against the idea that Trump’s executive order restricting immigration from seven Middle Eastern countries is a “Muslim ban.”
“And what we did was we focused on, instead of religion, danger,” Giuliani said of the commission he put together.
“The areas of the world that create danger for us, which is a factual basis, not a religious basis. Perfectly legal, perfectly sensible.”
Giuliani denied that the restrictions were “based on religion,” instead being “based on places where there are substantial evidence that people are sending terrorists into our country.”
Trump signed in executive order Friday that halted the country’s refugee resettlement program for 120 days and banned Syrian refugees from the U.S. indefinitely.
People from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Libya are also prohibited from entering the U.S. for 90 days.
On Saturday, a federal judge granted an emergency stay on the implementation of Trump’s order. The temporary stay impacts travelers with valid visas.
