Former President Barack Obama (OMG! We miss you so much, you don’t even know!) wants to make it clear that President Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban” is not based on policy from his presidency.
According to the Washington Post, Trump claimed that his new immigration executive order is a lot like a 2011 ban on Iraqi admission into the U.S. by then-President Obama. On Monday, Obama’s spokesperson Kevin Lewis issued a statement rejecting any such notion:
With regard to comparisons to President Obama’s foreign policy decisions, as we’ve heard before, the President fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion.
Obama also added, “Stop saying my name and let me chill.” Basically, the former president wants no part of Trump’s current policy, which bans “the entry of migrants from seven Muslim-majority countries into the U.S., and [suspends] temporarily the admission of refugees,” the Washington Post reports. Members of Obama’s administration told the Post that there was never an effort to stop awarding visas to Iraqis during Obama’s presidency.
After widespread protest over the weekend against Trump’s “Muslim ban,” Lewis noted that Obama was “heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country.”
“In his final official speech as President, he spoke about the important role of citizen and how all Americans have a responsibility to be the guardians of our democracy—not just during an election but every day,” Lewis also said in the statement. “Citizens exercising their Constitutional right to assemble, organize and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake.”
Read more at the Washington Post.