Though if you read Art of the Deal or have studied how Trump operates, his initial position on anything is always more than he wants. So they "backpedaled" on green cards and legal visas and still have what they really wanted.

Yes I know about "talk past the deal".

But that's not how democratic leaders are meant to act, that's how dictators act.

I feel like America is selling its birthright - a democratic republic - for the illusion of security. It's been happening ever since 9/11 but now it's even worse.

No, that's not how dictators act. How dictators act is they do what they want and if you resisted, they put you in jail or kill you. Dictators don't need negotiating tactics because negotiation is part of democratic process which requires consensus. Dictators don't negotiate, they dictate.

Consensus ... crowd pleasing ... dictators can do that. The hallmark of the dictator is their disrespect for individual rights, but you can totally please a crowd while stepping on individual rights, see Chavez:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/27/...

Consensus and crowd pleasing is not the same. And dictators aren't usually as good at pleasing the crowds as they think they are, otherwise there would be no need to suppress freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of elections, etc. which dictators (including Chavez, of course) routinely do.

Every time this book is mentioned, I feel obliged to add the caveat that it was ghostwritten (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-g...)

And if anyone running things in the Trump administration actually knew the law, or history, they'd understand that treating people equally no matter what country they came from is not negotiable. You can't run a government like a business deal.

I disagree with the EO, and reading it fully I think the green card issue was more of a lack of experience on how to govern. It was clearly rushed out with little planning.

The reason I bring this up, is that Trump has plethora of issues that do not need embellishment. Hyperbole will do nothing but make Trump supporters dig further in and reaffirm their beliefs. A woman on my FB feed the other day said that as a woman, she was likely to have her right to vote taken away by the next election. That type of comment does nothing but make people think 'crazy liberal'.

Maybe I'm overreacting but as a green card holder myself, the cavalier attitude this administration has to people's lives fucking terrifies me.

I don't want to go on vacation and then find I can't get back into America (where I have a job, a mortgage, a spouse, a social network and have lived for the past 9 years) because Trump suddenly took a dislike to my country of origin.

I'm not even from a Muslim country, but we have some Muslims, and plenty of non-white people, so given that Bannon was partly behind the EO and is openly white nationalist, who knows?

You are not overreacting. It's unnerving that a two-week old administration isn't willing to listen to anyone in their own government, or in our allies, and just thinks they know best. If they had people with experience, they'd understand just how much this policy messes with people's lives, and for no real benefit.

I don't know the future, but it is important to remember that the list of countries came from a failed nation list made by congress and the Obama administration (they also included Iran) [1]. Trump did not just pull it out of the air.

Green cards are also permanent residences so legally that is much harder to stop than not extending or granting new visas.

With that said, I'm against it and think it is bad policy on many fronts.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/29/politics/how-the-trump-adminis...

It was not lack of experience, it was deliberate, and only rolled back due to protests. After the order was put out, DHS decided that it didn't apply to green card holders. The administration then clarified that it did, and that's when SHTF as it were:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/28/politics/donald-trump-travel-b...