Given that Trump’s foreign policy team is only now taking shape, “it is just a way to push back with the only tool that he has, so he is giving a time-out while his team gets in place and then they will have a run at it,” Barrack said in an interview. Article content Nicholas Kamn / AFP / Getty Images This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. One Trump friend and adviser, Tom Barrack, said the president has indicated that the immigration order serves two purposes: one, to keep a potential terrorist out, but two to send a signal to the larger Middle East that the countries there need to take control of the situation at home and stop using a flood of refugees as a bargaining chip to pressure the West. “We are the most generous country in the world when it comes to our immigration policies but you have to go stand in line and you can’t be, at least for the next 90 days, a foreign national or a citizen of seven countries,” Conway said. Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway said on CNBC Monday that there was a campaign of “misinformation” about the order. He said such individuals would be allowed into the country barring any significant evidence that they pose “a serious threat to public safety and welfare.” Late in the day Sunday, Kelly issued a statement declaring that the entry of green-card holders is in the national interest. Article content Dania Maxwell / Bloomberg

Yet another aide said the status of such permanent legal residents would be clarified later.

Another Trump aide said the order added a new step to re-entry for some green-card holders. Two of his top aides, strategist Steve Bannon and son-in-law Jared Kushner, had to get on the phone with British officials to walk them through it. The fallout from the order was swift, compounded by the fact that few - including some of Trump’s own aides - seemed clear what was in it. “There are over 40 different countries worldwide that are majority Muslim that are not affected by this order.” “This is not about religion - this is about terror and keeping our country safe,” Trump said in a statement Sunday pushing back against the international uproar that followed his action. Trump compared his order to one issued by his predecessor, Barack Obama, and effectively told fellow Republicans who criticized him to mind their own business.

Master of puppets doom