Polygraph

The Trump administration's previous travel ban identified countries where the U.S. could not verify information or where ID-issuing offices were controlled by terrorist organizations.

Posted by The Charlie Kirk Show, Checked

Polygraph verdictTrue
Sources
4 support1 context
Said
1 time·
Confidence
60%
The Charlie Kirk ShowJul 30, 2026
View on Podcast ↗
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57 claimsThe check →

The 2017 travel ban was based on a worldwide review of whether countries could verify identity and share security information, and the countries that failed were restricted, which supports the claim's core point that unverifiable countries were identified.

A guest makes this claim. Listeners heard it, so it counts against the post, and on the guest's own record.

What was said

… I don't believe you can properly vet it. What can you do on the legal front, ah, to stop immigration from Muslim countries? So, uh, number one, you can go back to what they did in Trump One and expand that, and what they did in Trump One is they essentially, uh, identified every single country in which we can't actually verify the information that's being sent for people. They're either corrupted or in the hands of terrorist organizations. You know, if if uh ISIS controls the ID making office in, a you know, Syria, then we can't actually vet anyone that they're sending to us, and it just so happened that every country that qualified under that was Islamic. …
The Charlie Kirk Show · · from the transcriptPost →

What we found

Supports. The 2017 proclamation restricted nationals of countries that failed to meet a baseline for providing information needed to vet entrants, and officials said the review sought to verify identity and screen for threats.[1][2][3]

Supports. NPR reported that the administration initially identified 16 countries that either could not or would not provide the information needed to verify identity and check records of criminals and terrorists.[4]

Context. Official criteria included whether a country is a known or potential terrorist safe haven, which is the closest documented match to the claim's reference to terrorist-controlled ID offices; no source states that ID offices were specifically controlled by terrorist organizations.[2][5]

Context. The post's example of ISIS controlling an ID office in Syria is illustrative and is not documented as a specific finding of the 2017 review.[2]

Sources

5 sources: 1 fact-checker, 2 primary, 1 tier 2, 1 not rated

  1. 1Trump sets new, indefinite travel restrictionspolitifact.com · fact-checker · cited for: supports
  2. 2Proclamation on Improving Enhanced Vetting Capabilities and ...trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov · primary source · cited for: supports, context
  3. 3External Linktravel.state.gov · primary source · cited for: supports
  4. 4White House Revises Travel Ban, Expands Countries : NPRnpr.org · tier 2 · cited for: supports
  5. 5Travel Ban Is Based on Executive Whim, Not Objective ...cato.org · not rated · cited for: context

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