US Senator: Court ruling gives President Trump 'a lesson'

Former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has praised the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' decision on President Donald Trump's controversial immigration order, saying the US leader has learned a lesson from the ruling.

Senator Bernie Sanders (right) and President Donald Trump (Photo: NY Magazine)

Earlier, all three judges on the appeals court voted to uphold a lower court's decision to temporarily halt the implementation of Trump's controversial immigration ban last month. Under the ban, the US will stop accepting all refugees for four months and ban citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries - including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen - from entering the US for 90 days.

According to Mr. Sanders, Hillary Clinton's strongest opponent in the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2016, the ruling of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals also "gives President Trump a lesson in American history as well as how democracy works in America."

The Vermont senator praised the court's ruling as marking "a good day for America's system of checks and balances," and stressed that if President Trump "respected America's tradition of religious freedom," he would not have issued such a controversial executive order in the first place.

“He should not have had to resort to Islamophobic and hateful rhetoric to justify an immigration ban targeting citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries. A president who is responsible for the safety of his own citizens does not instill discriminatory ideas in the minds of terrorists who are trying to recruit more people to kill Americans,” Sanders added.

Senator Sanders said that if President Trump respected the “separation of powers” ​​between the legislative, executive and judicial branches, which is clearly stipulated in the US Constitution, he would not have attacked federal judge James Robart - who issued a ruling to suspend the new president's immigration order nationwide, or “tried to mock the decision of the federal appeals court” on Twitter.

Earlier, right after the appeals court ruled on the immigration order, President Trump wrote a heated comment on Twitter: "See you in court! Our security is at stake." This statement implied that President Trump's administration would likely appeal the appeals court's ruling and file a lawsuit with the Supreme Court - the body with the final say on Mr. Trump's immigration order.

According to Dan Tri