Priebus On Uproar, Chaos Over Travel Ban: We ‘Apologize For Nothing’

Reince Priebus Victory Reception, National Building Museum, Washington DC, USA - 18 Jan 2017 (Rex Features via AP Images)
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said in an interview Sunday that the response to President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order banning refugees and immigrants from certain countries from entering the U.S. “wasn’t chaos” and that he would “apologize for nothing.”

“It seems that a lot of the chaos yesterday could have been avoided, had you at least included some sort of timed grace period,” Chuck Todd asked Priebus on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” “Why was that not included?”

“Well, I don’t think you want to have a grace period,” Priebus replied. “Then people that want to do bad things to Americans will just move up their travel date two days in order to get into the country before the grace period’s over.”

Priebus said that “a lot of people,” including U.S. Customs and Border Protection, “would just tell you you’ve got to rip off the band-aid.”

“It wasn’t chaos,” he insisted. “I mean, the fact of the matter is 325,000 people from foreign countries came into the United States yesterday and 109 people were detained for further questioning. Most of those people were moved out.”

Priebus said that a “couple dozen” people are still being detained.

“I would suspect as long as they’re not awful people, that they will move through before another half a day today, and perhaps some of these people should be detained further,” he said. “And if they’re folks that shouldn’t be in this country, they’re going to be detained. And so, apologize for nothing here.”

Following Trump’s signing of the order, massive protests broke out at airports around the United States.

Watch their exchange below:

Latest Livewire

Notable Replies

  1. Republicans aren’t Christian.

    Jesus taught Love thy Neighbor.

    Maybe they’re all secret Muslims and need to be locked up at Guantanamo to Make America Safe Again?

  2. Chaos is the point.

  3. After 8 years of inaccurately complaining Obama was violating the law they think their dictator has permission to actually violate the law.

  4. I don’t want your apologies. I want to see you on your knees begging for mercy when the judge slams down her/his gavel.

    PS: Now everyone knows Bannon is higher on the ladder than you, Priebus. Maybe consider that.

  5. The sooner we recognize that Republicans will all line up and eat Putin’s shit for a dollar, the sooner we can get them to a country where they belong. It sure as fuck ain’t the US.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

197 more replies

Participants

Avatar for playitagainrowlf Avatar for austin_dave Avatar for jsfox Avatar for littlegirlblue Avatar for mattinpa Avatar for leftflank Avatar for bluestatedon Avatar for squirreltown Avatar for mantan Avatar for emjayay Avatar for cd Avatar for stradivarius50t3 Avatar for darcy Avatar for calijo Avatar for astepintime Avatar for darrtown Avatar for tena Avatar for antisachetdethe Avatar for castor_troy Avatar for tiowally Avatar for maximus Avatar for dannysgrandma Avatar for clare Avatar for eisenst

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: