Trump takes aim at visa program
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump touched off a partisan debate over some of the most divisive issues in American life on Wednesday as he cited this week’s terrorist attack in New York to advance his agenda on immigration and national security while assailing Democrats for endangering the country.
A day after a man the police described as an immigrant from Uzbekistan plowed a pickup truck along a crowded bicycle path in Manhattan, killing eight people, Trump denounced the U.S. criminal justice system as “a joke” and “a laughingstock,” adding that he was open to sending “this animal” instead to the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Trump pressed Congress to cancel a visa lottery program that allowed the driver into the country, attributing it to Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, and called Democrats “obstructionists” who “don’t want to do what’s right for our country.”
The terrorist attack in New York on Tuesday was the first by a foreign-born assailant on U.S. soil since Trump’s inauguration, and the president wasted little time Wednesday morning assigning fault.
“The terrorist came into our country through what is called the “Diversity Visa Lottery Program,” a Chuck Schumer beauty,” he wrote on Twitter.
Schumer responded from the floor of the Senate: “President Trump, instead of politicizing and dividing America, which he always seems to do at times of national tragedy, should be bringing us together and focusing on the real solution — antiterrorism funding — which he proposed to cut in his most recent budget.”
Responding to questions by reporters, Trump said he was open to transferring the suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, from civilian courts into the military system set up for foreign terrorists. “I would certainly consider that,” he said at the beginning of a Cabinet meeting.
Asked later about the president’s comment on Guantánamo, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, dismissed it as notional, saying that “he wasn’t necessarily advocating for it, but he certainly would support it if he felt like that was the best move.”