JAKE TAPPER (HOST): President Trump's executive action temporarily banning visitors from several countries from entering the U.S., putting a hold on the refugee program and perhaps indefinitely halting the entry of Syrian refugees into the U.S. continues to create controversy and conflict. Last night President Trump finally brought the heft of the office to his trademark line, you're fired, calling the then acting attorney general Sally Yates, an Obama appointee, weak on immigration issues and accusing her of betraying the Department of Justice by refusing to stand behind the Trump executive order on immigration. Chaos has of course rippled from Washington, D.C. to airports and foreign capital around the world. Today White House press secretary Sean Spicer was complaining that members of the media are unfairly using the term “Ban” to describe the president's action.
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TAPPER: Not a ban, okay. But I could have sworn I heard somebody in the Trump administration using the term ban before. Was it possibly President Trump? On Twitter? Quote, “if the ban were announced with a one-week notice, the bad would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad dudes out there.” Now, Sean Spicer was asked about the president's use of the word ban in that tweet today.
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TAPPER: Okay. So, though the president put “bad” and “dudes” in quotation in that tweet, he didn't use quotations for ban, he was merely using the term that the media is unfairly using. It seems odd, though, right, if you object to the term, you shouldn't use it, right?
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TAPPER: Okay. But to be fair, that was Sean Spicer on Sunday. Surely he has not used the term ban since then, such as -- I don't know -- last night when he spoke at George Washington University.
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TAPPER: Okay. Everybody clear now? Nobody should follow the lead of the biased media and call the executive action a ban. Instead, follow the lead of the White House and call it a ban.
