Nations under travel ban already faced scrutiny

“Here’s the deal: If you’re coming in and out of one of those seven countries — by the way, identified by the Obama administration as the seven most dangerous countries in the world in regard to harboring terrorists and affirmed by Congress multiple times — then you’re going to be subjected temporarily with more questioning until a better program is put in place over the next several months.” — White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on the Jan. 29 “Meet the Press”

Two days after President Donald Trump temporarily banned certain groups of people from entering the United States, his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, defended the executive order by directing attention to terrorism and Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.

The protest-triggering order has been criticized as a “Muslim ban” (it is and it isn’t, we found). But Trump refutes that, asserting that the part of the order targeting seven Muslim-majority countries is aimed at fighting terrorism.

As we noted in our Muslim ban article, the large majority of jihadists committing acts of terror in America have been American citizens or legal residents.

And since 9/11, no one in the United States has been killed in a terrorist attack by someone from the seven countries, though there have been at least three non-deadly cases in which the perpetrator was connected to Iran or Somalia.

So, were the seven nations that are identified in Trump’s travel ban pegged by the Obama administration as the “seven most dangerous countries in the world in regard to harboring terrorists”?

Not quite in that way, but Priebus has a point . ... Prompted by concerns about terrorism, the Obama administration did put those seven countries — Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen — on a list that makes travel into the United States somewhat more difficult.

But that list doesn’t necessarily identify the seven as being the most dangerous.

For a statement is partially accurate but takes things out of context, our rating is Half True.

Reince Priebus