Jeanine Pirro, the primetime Fox News host who was the subject of an anti-CNN ad on Wednesday, called for the ban to be reversed on the Sunday talk show she anchors.
“I’m trying to figure out why John Boehner [the former speaker of the house] wasn’t standing here with me, telling Joe Biden to do this with his new-found rage,” Pirro said on Outnumbered.
The ban, which was passed in late 2015 by Democratic congressmen, generally bans non-English speakers from travelling to the US within 30 days. Although its intent was to bar terrorism from flowing into the US from Mexico, it was later used to protest against immigration.
Biden was reportedly at a closed-door fundraiser on Thursday evening and a spokesperson did not respond to an emailed request for comment on Pirro’s remarks. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Tuesday, Biden said he was outraged by the ban, but did not quite call for its reversal.
“This visa ban is pure insanity. It’s dumb and I’m not afraid to say it,” he said at a dinner for American University students in Washington. “It sounds like someone told me to hit the roof.”
Pirro, a former prosecutor and Fox News personality, was livid that he hadn’t made his feelings public sooner.
“Do you want to apologize for saying this?” she asked, pointing to the green card held by Biden, whom she was questioning. “The president, he’s apologizing for everything that’s ever been done and say he is a sincere person? We were in a war on terror with Isis, and we dealt with Isis very harshly.
“There are so many instances of President Obama saying what a nice guy he is,” she said. “Well, he was a nice guy before. … He’s allowed to make this choice as to whether we want to have dialogue with our friends and our enemies. But he had no reason to put this immigration ban in place.”