The natural choice for the White House this morning to defend its travel ban should be nationalist-in-chief Steve Bannon, but Bannon has stayed far away from Sunday morning interviews since joining Trump’s campaign last year. Instead Team Trump will offer the networks the next best thing, policy advisor and border hawk Stephen Miller, who helped write the travel-ban order with Bannon. He’ll be on “This Week,” “Face the Nation,” and “Fox News Sunday” to game out the administration’s next moves legally — maybe they’ll appeal the Ninth Circuit ruling to the Supreme Court or maybe they’ll scrap the order and rewrite it to address some of the thornier legal problems, like the confusion over admitting green-card holders. It was, allegedly, Miller and Bannon who insisted that the travel ban did apply to people with green cards, contrary to the interpretation by DHS. Expect Miller to be asked this morning why he thought he was better positioned to make that judgment than, say, John Kelly.
A notable omission from this weekend’s shows as I write this on Saturday morning is Kellyanne Conway, normally Trump’s most reliable and ubiquitous Sunday surrogate. Maybe she’ll be booked overnight — she’s done plenty of interviews this past week, including the instantly famous one with Jake Tapper — but with ethics watchdogs sniffing around after she touted Ivanka Trump’s fashion line on TV a few days ago, go figure that she might want to lie low for awhile. With Conway out, the closest thing to a Trump spokesman (besides Miller) is … Chris Christie, who’ll be on “State of the Union” to cheerlead for the White House in hopes of getting back in Trump’s good graces. Christie’s convinced he’ll end up in the administration eventually if he simply bides his time and waits for vacancies to open up as other top advisors either alienate Trump or get tired of working for him. He’s probably right.
Also this morning, Chuck Schumer will be on “Face the Nation” to complain about everything. The full line-up is at the AP.
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