"We're not taking them from infested countries": Trump promises to bring back Muslim ban

Former President Donald Trump vowed to restore one of the most widely-criticized policies of his first administration on Thursday in a Washington D.C. speech on combatting antisemitism.

Trump told a crowd at the Israeli American Council’s annual conference that he’d bring back his infamous Muslim ban, which barred entry to the U.S. from a list of Muslim-majority countries.

“I will ban refugee resettlement from terror-infested areas like the Gaza Strip,” Trump said. “We will seal our border and bring back the travel ban. Remember the famous travel ban? We didn’t take people from certain areas of the world.”

Trump accused "foreign jihad sympathizers" of "ripping down and burning our shopping centers" and "killing people."

Trump's travel ban initially targeted citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. It expanded over time to include citizens of countries as wide ranging as Venezuela, Kyrgyzstan and North Korea. The ban was struck down by federal courts three times before the Supreme Court gave a pared-down version the green light. All restrictions were repealed on President Joe Biden's first day in office.

The suggestion that countries included in the initial Muslim ban are “infested” comes as Trump’s dehumanizing rhetoric against immigrants accelerates. Trump has spent the last week touting a lie about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs. He told a crowd earlier this year that Venezuelan immigrants were “not humans" and has referred to political opponents as “vermin”.

The former president, who has dined with avowed neo-Nazis like Nick Fuentes, said on Thursday that it didn’t make sense for Jewish voters to back Democrats.

“You have to defeat Kamala Harris,” Trump said. “More than any other people on Earth, Israel, I believe, has to defeat her.”