Donald Trump’s lawyer finds a new way to screw up in court

When Donald Trump took office, one of his first priorities was enacting a blatantly racist and plainly unconstitutional ban aimed at keeping people from predominantly Muslim nations from entering the United States. It was quickly rejected by the courts, and over the past year-plus, various judges have continued to shoot it down. Now Trump has one of his supposedly best legal minds arguing the case in court, and the guy just found a whole new way to blow it.

Trump sent his favorite new White House lawyer, Solicitor General Noel Francisco, into court to argue that the Muslim ban is unconstitutional. Francisco promptly referred to the Muslim religion as “one of the great countries of the world.” There was no indication that Francisco misspoke or got tongue tied, as there was no attempt on his part at correcting it; it sounds like he really doesn’t know the difference. So why is this important legally?

Donald Trump spent the election proposing what he called a “Muslim ban” as he made clear that he was trying to block people from entering the U.S. based on their religion. Once he was in office, his people tried to work around that by simply banning people from several Muslim-dominated countries, while pretending it had nothing to do with religion. Judges have routinely scoffed at this supposed distinction, with some of them directly citing Trump’s “Muslim ban” tweets as evidence.

Now Trump’s lawyer is in court trying to make the argument that the Muslim religion is a country. So much for the notion that Trump’s ban against certain countries has nothing to do with the Muslim religion. But as far as Trump’s lawyers go, Francisco shouldn’t feel too bad. All he’s doing is incompetently ruining Trump’s racist political agenda in court. Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen had to plead the Fifth Amendment today in court.