Christie Says Trump's Travel Ban 'Should Have Been Done Better'
WASHINGTON (CBSNewYork/CBS News/AP) -- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Sunday criticized the rollout of President Donald Trump's executive order barring travel from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Christie said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that he believes Mr. Trump is right "on the substance" but that it "should have been done better."
"I think anyone who looks at this knows it could have been and should have been done better," Christie said.
He argued that the reason Trump's critics have been so successful is not because he's wrong "on the substance," but because the order wasn't rolled out properly.
"The reason his opponents are able to attack him -- and I believe unfairly -- on the substance is because it was implemented in such a haphazard way in that first weekend," he said.
Still, Christie said he believes the Seattle-based federal judge who halted the executive order is "wrong on this one," and that the actual text of the order is "much, much better" than Mr. Trump's original proposal for a Muslim ban back in late 2015.
"I would make it even more tailored if I were advising the president on this directly," he said. "But the president has moved an incredible distance from a Muslim ban to where he is now … the policy is much, much better than where the president began during the campaign."
He said he knows Mr. Trump's "heart," and that Mr. Trump has "absolutely no -- no hate in his heart for Muslim Americans."
"This is what happens when things are not explained the right way from the beginning and are not implemented in a way that respects the process and is very careful about it," he said. "And that's why I said earlier in the week that the president was not well-served by this. Now this means that he has to go out and the administration needs to go out and make his point of view clear."
On Sunday, a judge in San Francisco rejected the Trump Administration's request for an immediate reinstatement after a federal court refused to set aside a judge's order temporarily blocking the Trump administration's travel ban.
The decision means more legal battles in the case, which are expected to take place over the next several days.
U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle ruled late Friday against government lawyers' claims that Washington state and Minnesota, which sued over the ban, lacked the legal grounds to challenge Trump's order.
The Department of Justice filed an appeal of a Seattle federal judge's order halting the ban with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Saturday night.
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