Travel ban ruling, wiretap claim are politics on steroids

President Donald Trump has done and said plenty of things that are an embarrassment to the presidency, to the nation and that should be an embarrassment to himself. His most recent gaffe on steroids: the claim that Trump Tower was “wiretapped” on orders of then-President Obama during last year’s election campaign.

To make such a claim, apparently without evidence, is dangerous and destructive.

But not to be outdone, the politically motivated rulings by two federal judges last week that put Trump’s scaled-back travel ban on hold should be an embarrassment to the judicial branch.

In a nutshell, the revision would have imposed a 90-day ban on new visas from six countries — Somalia, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Iran and Yemen — while tougher procedures for vetting people coming from those countries could be put into place.

Revising the ban from an earlier version blocked by different federal judges was a rational and reasonable decision. Gone were the problems with notice. The restrictions on holders of current visas and green card holders were dropped. Iraq, whose troops are fighting ISIS with the help of American military advisers, was also dropped from the list.

The provisions that were removed were among the most heavily criticized in the first ban.

But “Muslim ban” has an appealing political ring to it, even though calling this a “Muslim ban” is as dishonest as it is incorrect. For starters, note that it does not apply to about 90 percent of the world’s Muslim population.

Second, it is a 90-day order. It is not permanent. For opponents to cite the fact that someone’s mother-in-law can’t visit from Somalia for the next three months as “irreparable harm” is laughable.

Third, federal law gives the president broad power over who can enter the country when there is a determination made in the interest of national security. For a federal judge to rule citing interviews on the campaign trail and cable television rather than what is in the order — and in the law and the Constitution — should be offensive to all Americans.

Former CIA chief Michael Hayden, also a retired Air Force four-star general and former director of the National Security Agency, said in a radio interview this week that he didn’t agree with the travel ban as a policy matter. But he said there had been significant changes in the revised order and that the countries listed were the right ones.

The point is that Iran is openly hostile and the others are embroiled in civil war or don’t really have functioning governments.

It is not beyond the pale to suggest that the court ruling in effect extends a kind of constitutional right to people from Yemen, Somalia, Libya and others to come here when they have no right to do so. That is an important distinction because current visa and green card holders are no longer included.

The court rulings are dangerous precedent on several fronts. And on the judicial embarrassment meter, right up there on the Trump scale.