Trump vows to 'bring back' travel ban as president — and make it 'even bigger than before'

Former President Donald Trump is pledging to reinstate his controversial travel ban if he is re-elected to the presidency, CBS News reported on Friday.

"Trump made the comment in Council Bluffs, Iowa, as he made his pitch to voters in the largely White state," reported Kathryn Watson and Zak Hudak. "'Under the Trump administration, we imposed extreme vetting and put on a powerful travel ban to keep radical Islamic terrorists and jihadists out of our country,' Trump told his audience. 'Well, how did that work out? We had no problem, right? They knew they couldn't come here if they had that moniker. They couldn't come here.'"

Trump went on to say, "When I return to office, the travel ban is coming back even bigger than before and much stronger than before. We don't want people blowing up our shopping centers. We don't want people blowing up our cities and we don't want people stealing our farms. So it's not gonna happen."

Trump's original travel ban was so blatantly targeted at Muslims specifically that federal courts voided or limited it multiple times.

The former president's third iteration of the ban, which included a few countries without substantial Muslim populations like North Korea and Venezuela, was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018.

This is not the first time the former president suggested he would bring back an enhanced version of the controversial policy. He made a similar pledge to voters in New Hampshire in May. However, the former president has not elaborated on how, exactly, he would make the ban stricter or which other countries might be on the table to ban.