WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has vowed to issue a new executive order to replace his controversial directive suspending travel to the United States by citizens of seven Muslim countries.

Trump used an extraordinary 80-minute news conference to make this announcement and also to lampoon the media, ridicule courts for allowing banned people into the US and to declare that he would continue taking unpopular decisions that were necessary for the security of his country.

“The new order is going to be very much tailored to what I consider to be a very bad decision,” he said. “We had a bad court. I will not back down from defending our country. I got elected on defence of our country.”

The president recalled that during the 2016 election campaign he had promised to mend the country’s broken immigration and visa system and to stop illegal immigration. “And I keep my campaign promises, and our citizens will be very happy when they see the result. We’re issuing a new executive action next week that will comprehensively protect our country,” he said.

Trump gave no details about the replacement order but legal experts told media outlets that the new directive would remove the weaknesses that allowed a court in Seattle, Washington, to stop the implementation of the original, Jan 27 order.

The Trump administration believes that the new order will have a better chance of withstanding judicial scrutiny if it covers some non-Muslim countries and exempts non-citizen immigrants living in the US legally.

A federal court in Seattle, and later an appeals court in San Francisco, found the old order discriminatory. The Jan 27 order also triggered huge protests in the United States and abroad and drew more than a dozen legal challenges.

Throughout the news conference, Trump ridiculed the media, calling it “very fake, false, horrible and dishonest”. He also told journalists covering the event that he knew what they were going to say about the news conference.

“Tomorrow, they will say, ‘Donald Trump rants and raves at the press’, but I’m not ranting and raving. I love this. I’m having a good time doing it,” he said.

Without giving them the chance to respond, he told reporters: “You know, you are dishonest people.”

Trump also told them that his news conference and speeches won him the election, not the media coverage.

In a conversation with CNN’s White House correspondent, the president said he did not like the network because it was fake. “I’m not OK when it is fake. I mean, I watch CNN, it’s so much anger and hatred and just the hatred,” he said.

He then turned to the entire press corps and declared: “You have a lower approval rate than Congress” because the American public thought the media was fake and dishonest.

“Do you want to set up the meeting?” asked Trump, when an African-American journalist asked him if he was going to meet the Congressional Black Caucus.

Published in Dawn, February 18th, 2017