President Donald Trump Friday tweeted another call for a travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries and for a wall at the Mexican border, while responding to the news of a massive terrorist attack at an Egyptian mosque.
Trump noted that he would be talking to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to discuss the attack on a mosque in the volatile northern Sinai Peninsula, in which 235 people were killed, but said the United States must get "tougher and smarter" about the threat of terrorism:
El-Sisi, in a televised statement, condemned the extremists' attack as "criminal" and "cowardly," and promised that their attack will not go unpunished.
Trump’s travel ban -- which covers people from Chad, Iran, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea and Yemen -- has been partially blocked by the courts, and his campaign promise of a border wall hasn’t advanced in Congress. Funding for the wall could emerge as a major sticking point in efforts to pass a spending bill before Dec. 8 in time to avert a government shutdown.
Democrats in Congress have objected to the idea of constructing a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and some Republicans also have said that a wall isn’t the best way to combat illegal immigration.
At least 235 people were killed when militants armed with guns and explosives stormed a crowded mosque in Egypt’s restive northern Sinai on Friday. The attack was the deadliest in the country in recent memory.