President Donald Trump said Wednesday that a federal appeals court would earn “respect” if it allowed for the immediate enforcement of his immigration executive order.
Speaking to the Major County Sheriffs’ Association and Major Cities Chiefs Association joint conference, Trump began his remarks by talking about the case, which will determine whether his immigration executive order can be enforced in the immediate short term.
“It is really incredible to me that we have a court case that is going on so long,” Trump said of the appeal process, before reading a paragraph of the law under which lawyers argued for his authority to suspend immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. “A bad high school student would understand this,” he later said of the law’s wording.
Later, Trump addressed the three judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals hearing the case, though the President refrained from criticizing them directly.
“I listened to a panel of judges and I’ll comment on that — I will not comment on the statements made by certainly one judge, but I have to be honest that if these judges wanted to, in my opinion, help the court in terms of respect for the court, they’d do what they should be doing,” he said.
Later, he returned to the court, seemingly trying to restrain himself.
“And I don’t ever want to call a court biased so I won’t call it biased, and we haven’t had a decision yet. But courts seem to be so political and it would be so great for our justice system if they would be able to read a statement and do what’s right,” he said. “And that has to do with the security of our country, which is so important. Right now we are at risk because of what happened.”
