The White House on Wednesday defended President Trump’s call for tougher visa vetting in the wake of Tuesday’s terror attack in New York, weeks after he refused to wade into the gun-control debate in the immediate aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting.
Trump tweeted Tuesday evening he ordered the Department of Homeland Security “to step our already extreme vetting program” in response to the violent attack by a radicalized Uzbek national, who had plowed his truck into a crowded Manhattan sidewalk.
“Look, this wasn’t about going the political route,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters. “This is something that, frankly, the president has been talking about for a long time. This isn’t a new policy. This isn’t a new position. This isn’t a new conversation.”
She continued, “The president has been talking about extreme vetting and the need for that for the purpose of protecting the citizens of this country since he was a candidate – long before he was president.”
Sarah Sanders on Trump’s call to dismantle the diversity lottery program: Trump has been talking about extreme vetting since the election pic.twitter.com/hRG8E6oPOV
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) November 1, 2017
Trump, who fired off several additional tweets Wednesday morning regarding immigration policy, has come under fire for his noticeably different reactions to the New York terror attack and the deadly Las Vegas shooting that killed 58 people last month.
“The stunning difference between Trump’s reactions to the Las Vegas shooting and the NYC attack,” read a CNN headline Wednesday morning.
“Now I get it. If the killer is an immigrant you can talk about policy change, but if he’s natural born, you’re ‘politicizing the tragedy,'” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a leading advocate for more restrictive gun safety measures, wrote on Twitter.
The White House repeatedly declined to comment on legislative efforts in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting that aimed to ban bump stocks and make it more difficult to purchase or sell semi-automatic weapons.
“I think before we start trying to talk about the preventions of what took place last night we need to know more facts,” Sanders said one day after the shooting occurred.
