Conflict of Interest: Trump and the Ban

Chris Sommerfeldt reports at The New York Daily News:

President Trump’s most recent executive order effectively bans citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. for at least 90 days — but some Muslim countries were spared from the order's blacklist, even though they have deep-seated ties to terrorism.

Conspicuously, records show Trump holds major business interests in several of the countries excluded from the list, while he doesn’t hold any stakes in the countries on it.

Friday’s executive order, signed at the Pentagon, suspends the issuing of U.S. visas or travel permits to people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Not a single American was killed by citizens from any of those countries between 1975 and 2015, according to statistics tallied by the conservative-leaning CATO Institute.

However, the same set of statistics show that nearly 3,000 Americans were killed by citizens from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Turkey in the same time period — with the bulk of those killed being victims of the 9/11 attacks. Yet, people from those four countries are still welcome to apply for U.S. visas and travel permits.