Jeff Sessions cheers on the crowd during a Donald Trump rally at the Ladd–Peebles Stadium, in Mobile, Alabama. AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, file

Attorney General Jeff Sessions refused to back down from a statement Wednesday evening that dismissed a federal judge striking down President Trump's immigration order as "a judge, sitting on an island in the Pacific."

"Well, I think that was a perfectly correct statement. We have some 700 federal judges. One of them has now stopped the president of the United States, who is briefed daily from the Department of Defense, the CIA, the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, on the dangers and threats we face," Sessions told MSNBC. "He's issued a perfectly reasonable executive order that delays six countries for 90 days from being brought — immigrants coming here because we cannot vet them."

Sessions added that he wasn't trying to insult Hawaii.