Lower courts have been convinced that President Donald Trump's temporary travel ban on six majority-Muslim countries was unconstitutional as it discriminated against Muslims, but Judge Andrew Napolitano Tuesday argued that the courts used the words of Trump as a candidate in reaching his decision.
"I have never seen this before, where the words of a candidate are used against that same person when he's now in office," Napolitano, now a Fox News senior legal analyst, told the "Fox & Friends" program.
"You often say incendiary things when you're running for office in the heat of the moment to gin up the crowd to resist your opponent."
His comments came a day after the Supreme Court upheld a more-broad version of Trump's ban, and ruled that people who do not have a direct family relationship to someone already in the United States will not be allowed into the country.
Napolitano, though, said he did not believe Trump's executive order to be unconstitutional.
While campaigning, Trump called for a "Muslim ban" from countries linked to terrorism, and often called out "radical Islamic terrorism."
The lower courts "found everything that Donald Trump the candidate said that was incendiary about immigrants from the Middle East and threw it in the mix and said, 'therefore he's against Muslims. Therefore he hates Islam. Therefore this is a Muslim ban. Therefore it's unconstitutional,'" Napolitano commented. "The Supreme Court said, 'We're not going to go there.'"
Meanwhile, the Constitution does give the president the authority for such a ban, said Napolitano.
"Congress has expressly said in a statute the president can stop immigration from designated countries from a finite period of time for national security purposes," he commented.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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