White House aides desperately tried to cheer up a sulking president over the weekend by going over the details of a new plan to ban travel from seven majority-Muslim countries, reports said.
According to The Washington Post, President Donald Trump was "steaming, raging mad" when he met with key staffers at his Mar-a-Lago weekend retreat.
Trump was reportedly upset over the way that lingering questions about Russia's involvement in the U.S. election overshadowed what he considered to be a perfect performance at his speech to a joint session of Congress last week.
“He was pissed,” Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy said after seeing Trump on the golf course. “I haven’t seen him this angry.”
"That night at Mar-a-Lago, Trump had dinner with Sessions, Bannon, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly and White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, among others," the Post noted. "They tried to put Trump in a better mood by going over their implementation plans for the travel ban, according to a White House official."
Vox's Matthew Yglesias pointed out that Trump advisers were trying to cheer him up "by reminding him of their looming plan to endanger the lives of some of the most desperate and vulnerable people on earth."
"And there’s no denying that the vast majority of the hardship will be inflicted on people who are not terrorists and who pose no national security risk to the United States," Yglesias wrote. "Most of all, there will be intense hardship visited upon refugees who would, if not for Trump, be candidates for resettlement in the United States of America."
"Trump has had his share of frustrations over the course of his young presidency, but this is the part he finds fun."
