President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday night after he nominated Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque President Donald Trump has jumped into the controversy surrounding how to refer to his executive order from last week regarding immigration and refugees.

"Everybody is arguing whether or not it is a BAN," Trump wrote on Twitter on Wednesday morning. "Call it what you want, it is about keeping bad people (with bad intentions) out of country!"

Many of Trump's critics have labeled the executive order a "Muslim ban," as it temporarily barred almost all travel to the US from seven countries that, while having been identified as terrorism hotspots, are predominantly Muslim. John Kelly, the secretary of homeland security, disputed that label on Tuesday.

The White House press secretary Sean Spicer during a briefing Tuesday disputed calling the policy a "ban" of any kind, instead calling it an "extreme vetting" system.

Trump himself, however, referred to his policy as a ban in a tweet sent Monday.

When a reporter noted at Tuesday's press briefing that Trump had used the word "ban" to describe the order, Spicer claimed the president was simply "using the words that the media is using."

But Spicer has also referred to the executive order as a ban, as CNN anchor Jake Tapper pointed out on his show "The Lead" on Tuesday.

The executive order bans travel to the US for 90 days from Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Yemen, and Libya, countries the White House pointed to as once having been identified by the Obama administration as especially terror-prone. It also bars all refugees from entering the US for 120 days and bars Syrian refugees indefinitely.

It caused chaos in airports, with confusion over how it should be implemented, and led to widespread protests last weekend. Federal judges in four states issued a temporary stay on Saturday preventing authorities from deporting travelers who were stuck in airports because of the order, but the long-term legality of the measure remains unclear.