Or they don't believe they are being racist? Closing borders to some Muslim dominated countries while leaving them open to the largest Muslim countries in the world does give the impression that maybe it's not about being Muslim and it's more about nations.

I think the issue is more or less political, and it's twofold.

The first is that Donald Trump explicitly ran a primary campaign that at one time called for banning all Muslim travel to the United States. It is difficult for me to see how that promise is not rooted in some combination of bigotry and ignorance. For those who remember such promises Trump made, Trump will not automatically signal "compassion" and "tolerance", and I'm sure it's easy to morph an awfully crude executive order targeting countries already on a watch list into a policy that advocates "racism" and "bigotry".

The second is that the executive order was so poorly constructed, so hastily issued, and so overly sweeping, that it snagged people that shouldn't have been snagged (your green card holders and already-accepted refugees and whatnot) and threw immigration into chaos. Again, this only adds to the overall impression of "racism" for those who already have it.

From my perspective, my impression of this Trump executive order is more one of shoot-from-the-hip incompetence (that could've been avoided merely with more consultation with policy experts) and a fairly deaf political ear.

If that were so, we would have to put Saudi on the ban list. Most of the 9/11 attackers were from Saudi. Saudi has produced some of the world's most notorious terrorists.

Do we suddenly think Saudi society has changed enough that no Saudis are prone to terrorism?

Neither American political party is interested in Saudi Arabia being on any kind of ban list for reasons of US geopolitics, and this has consistently been the case since before 9/11. Remember how difficult it was to get any kind of official confirmation Saudis were involved? Remember how they were one of the big donors to the Clinton Foundation? If not treating Saudi Arabia as a terrorist threat is proof of racism, then almost every US politician is racist (and probably most of the US press too).

It's not so much proof of racism as it is proof that this executive order isn't actually about keeping America safe.

Nations without Trump hotels.

Nations defined as "nations of terrorism concern" back in 2015.

Source: https://www.quora.com/Why-didn%E2%80%99t-Donald-Trump-includ...

So you're saying that the Obama administration set up their list of countries with terrorist activities based on the business interests of somebody who wasn't even running for office yet?

This seems strange to me.

I never said what they're doing was similar. I was merely pointing out that the list of countries they're doing the new, non-similar, horrible things to, was inherited from the previous administration.

Hence your "nations without Trump hotels" comment seemed strange to me.

do you really believe this? honest question.

I do, it's been in the news a few times lately...

http://www.npr.org/2017/01/28/512199324/countries-listed-on-...

Believe what? I stated an easily verifiable fact.

It's also not very relevant since there's bound to be a strong relation between being relatively stable and prosperous (to say nothing of free, mind) and having trump hotels. I'm no fan of him, but I also don't like "my side" using weak attacks.

The notion that refugees from these seven countries represent a particularly grave threat is nonsense, so we're left to speculate on the real motives. Forty years ago, Jimmy Carter put his peanut farm into a blind trust. Trump still owns properties all over the world. Since he hasn't released his taxes, we have no idea how much money he owes and to whom. It's not at all unreasonable to assume that his decisions will at the very least be affected by his substantial holdings.

Of course it's nonsense, and of course Trump's going to try to help (and avoid harming) his own fortune, and maybe this is even a case of that, it just happens that "discriminating against the same countries been bombing" doesn't require "discriminating against countries that contain Trump properties", so unless we get a leaked memo where he explicitly forbids doing anything to affect travel from those other countries, the conflict of interest case is pretty weak.

Meanwhile, I think the move is motivated by 1) actual interests of people in his cabinet and advisory group (notably Bannon), and 2) populist pandering for re-election. I think that's sufficient motivation. I think the ham-fisted implementation of the policy is either arrogance meeting incompetence or an attempt to anchor expectations so low that Republican elected officials can later happily get on board with him when he's merely being very awful instead of incomprehensibly awful, saying he's "learned". I hope it's the former.

Agreed.