“Everybody is arguing whether or not it is a BAN," President Donald Trump says. | Getty Trump on immigration order: Call it what you want — it's about keeping 'bad people' out

Ban or no ban, President Donald Trump said Wednesday morning that the labels applied to his controversial executive order restricting immigration from certain nations do no matter.

What does matter, the president said, is that it keeps “bad people” from entering the U.S.


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

The post comes one day after White House press secretary Sean Spicer devoted significant time at his Tuesday press briefing to insisting that Trump’s executive order, which temporarily bars individuals from seven majority-Muslim nations from entering the country, does not constitute a ban.

But Spicer’s adamant assertion that the word “ban” does not apply to Trump’s order goes against the language the president himself has used to describe it. At least twice, once on Saturday and again on Monday, Trump has referred to the order as a ban. And Spicer himself has twice labeled the order a ban, once in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” and again during a public discussion at George Washington University.

At his Tuesday press briefing, Spicer said Trump was merely ““using the words the media is using” by referring to his order as a ban. But the discrepancy in the administration’s descriptors for its own policy has further brightened a spotlight on the controversial order, the rollout of which created mass confusion over the weekend and prompted significant protests across the country.