The 5-Minute Fix from The Washington Post

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By Amber Phillips

On paper, President Trump's temporary travel ban for travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries — while always destined to draw major opposition — might have been expected to find some noteworthy public support.

A Quinnipiac poll from earlier this month found 48 percent of Americans supported “suspending immigration from 'terror prone' regions, even if it meant turning away refugees from those regions.”

And yet, almost 72 hours after Trump signed the executive order putting those restrictions in place, the decision appears to be much more of a net negative politically than even its biggest detractors might have expected.

Demonstrators in Chicago (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

There have been global protests. Jihadist groups are celebrating the order. National security experts are criticizing it. A former president is encouraging protests against it. Even dozens of members of the Trump's own party and major GOP donors tied to the Koch brothers say they can't support it.

In other words, leaving aside for the moment the question of the policy merit, the early political reviews are in, and they're not good: The implementation of the policy was a “Waterworld” on opening weekend-size disaster. “The situation is a near-perfect example of Trump's penchant for turning political molehills into mountains,” writes The Fix's Aaron Blake.

Here are some of the reasons:

It wasn't communicated well: This weekend, White House officials gave sometimes-contradictory statements about whether green cardholders from these nations would be let in. It's bad enough if the public doesn't understand the details of a new policy. It's even worse when the people charged with implementing it are similarly in the dark.

The confusion cleared the decks for the opposition: Democratic members of Congress were pretty sure they knew what was in the executive order: An unconstitutional religious test. “Make no mistake — this is a Muslim ban,” said Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) in a statement less than an hour after Trump had signed it. The wording of the order itself helped them make that case: it said there would be exceptions for persecuted religious minorities from those majority Muslim nations, such as Christians.

“It’s illegal; it will be overturned,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told supporters in Boston. (Nicolaus Czarnecki/The Boston Herald via AP)

Trump was forced to play defense, pushing back on the “Muslim ban” language in a statement he issued Sunday night.

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By then, thousands of protesters — including in red states like Kansas and Texas — had taken to the streets and airports for the second time in a week to protest his administration.

An international traveler smiles as she walks past the protest against Trump's travel ban at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (REUTERS/Laura Buckman)

On Monday morning before dawn, Trump aimed his Twitter account at an unrelated Delta Airlines computer outage, blaming the technical issue for delayed travel, and the rushed implementation on a need to somehow stop “bad 'dudes'” from entering the United States — though he hadn't yet made the case for how this would accomplish that goal.

BadDudes DeltaAirport

He let his own divisive rhetoric get in the way: He may not like the term attached to his executive order, but he bears a good share of the blame for the birth of that description: Trump himself proposed temporarily banning all Muslim immigration in December 2015, a proposal he may or may not have walked back since then, but one that definitely still trails him given his long-running commentary on suggesting a Muslim database, increased surveillance of mosques.

As recently as this weekend, Trump suggested a preference for Christian refugees over Muslim ones.

Trump confidant Rudy Giuliani told Fox News on Sunday that Trump specifically asked him how to implement a “Muslim ban” (Giuliani's words, not ours.) “He called me up. He said, 'Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally,'" said the former New York City mayor.

Meet the man whose fingerprints are all over Trump's controversial first week

Attorney-General nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

You may already have heard of Jeff Sessions. If not: you will.

Before becoming the first sitting senator to support Trump, Sessions had the reputation as someone on the ideological edge of his own party, more conservative than even his fellow Republicans — a lawmaker who opposed even some forms of legal immigration and was denied a federal judgeship in the 1980s because of accusations he made racially insensitive comments.

Now, Sessions is center stage. He's Trump's pick to be attorney general, and three of the president's top policy and political advisers have close ties to Sessions. The Post's Philip Rucker and Robert Costa lay out how so many roads in the Trump White House lead back to Sessions.

Also, did you hear that one about the Supreme Court?

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In the midst of Trump's pre-dawn tweeting about Delta Airlines and “bad dudes,” he decided that it was time to change the subject — and suddenly, an event he'd previously said would happen Thursday was pushed up by several days.

TrumpSCOTUS

It was the equivalent of Trump saying to the media: “Hey, look over here at this other thing!” writes The Fix's Callum Borchers.

I'll admit, I looked. And what I found was the potential for an epic showdown in the Senate on Trump's Supreme Court nominee, one that could eliminate the filibuster for all nominees and send whatever hint of bipartisanship is left in the Senate into flames. Stay tuned.

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