Donald Trump remains firmly in the lead for the GOP nomination, garnering more than 50% in nearly every poll, while Ron DeSantis continues to lag behind him by significant margins. But Trump has been behaving a bit differently this time around, participating in some of the more “typical” campaign events in the early voting states, rather than sticking to his massive personal rallies. And like the other candidates, he’s begun laying out what he plans to do if he’s elected again and, perhaps more importantly, what he would do differently than Joe Biden. While addressing voters in Iowa yesterday, Trump pointed to one of those differences. He promised to bring back the travel ban that he imposed on visitors from countries with significant terrorist activity. (Biden ended the ban via executive order shortly after taking office.) But he said this time the ban will be even “bigger” and “stronger” than before. (CBS News)

Former President Trump said Friday for the first time publicly during the 2024 presidential campaign that he would bring back a travel ban “even bigger than before,” alluding to his administration’s restrictions on travelers from heavily Muslim countries.

The first two bans faced steep challenges in court, but the third version of the ban was upheld by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision in 2018. That ban barred nearly all travelers from five mainly Muslim countries, in addition to North Korea and Venezuela. President Biden signed an executive order reversing the ban his first week in office.

Trump made the comment in Council Bluffs, Iowa, as he made his pitch to voters in the largely White state.

It’s worth noting the tone that CBS takes in their coverage of this speech because some things never change. They repeatedly refer to Trump banning travel from “mainly Muslim countries,” despite the list also including North Korea and Venezuela, neither of which are known for their Muslim populations. They prefer to paint a picture of Trump as being “anti-Muslim” when he is actually “anti-terrorist.” They also work in a description of Iowa as a “largely white state.” Because, as you know, the Bad Orange Man must always be depicted as a racist or some other form of “ist.” CBS is clearly getting in practice in case Trump is once again the nominee.

To be fair, Trump was making it fairly clear who he was planning on keeping out of the country as much as possible. He specifically referred to “radical Islamic terrorists and jihadists” who might be coming here to “blow up our shopping centers.” And it’s not as if the threat of Islamic terror has entirely abated. ISIS had their butts handed to them in Syria and Iraq (largely thanks to Trump), but they’ve recently been making a comeback in Afghanistan and would no doubt like to hit us again.

Our list of concerns in such matters has grown, however, and Trump should be addressing that fact as well. It’s well-established that Chinese nationals have been crossing our southern border in alarming numbers over the past year. (Far more than have traditionally been encountered before the open borders era.) Some of them are families who may be seeking to escape oppression back home, and that would be fine if they applied to do so legally. But many of them are single young men of military age. Some number of those are almost certainly CCP moles and spies.

The bottom line is that we need to close the border to all illegal migration. And Trump has already promised to do that (again). But we also need to begin rounding up and deporting all of the ones who have been released into the interior under the Biden administration after checking to see if they show up on any terrorist watchlists. And that’s only one of many extremely urgent tasks requiring attention. If Donald Trump or any other Republican winds up winning the White House next year, they will have a massive -to-do list awaiting them. I don’t envy them the workload, but I’m just praying that they are up to the task and not just paying lip service to these crises.