A week ago, we asked if Donald Trump could win by losing. The issue was his temporary travel ban, first blocked by a federal judge and then stifled by the Ninth Circuit Court. Trump was perfectly correct legally, but he could have executed better, and we hoped he’d skip the next appeal and craft a better order. At his press conference Thursday, Trump still insisted he’s going to appeal, but also noted that he’ll issue a new order next week: “The new order is going to be very much tailored to what I consider to be a very bad decision.”

The Washington Examiner’s Daniel Allott explains the problem with the original order: “Trump’s initial executive order, issued in late January, raised constitutional and humanitarian questions as nobody seemed to know exactly who was barred from the county. The poorly written order created confusion, as travelers from affected countries who were in transit were detained at airports. The order was enforced against people who already had visas, including permanent U.S. residents.”

Trump’s objective with a temporary ban is to implement better vetting for incoming refugees — clearly, that’s desirable. The seven nations subject to a temporary ban (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan) are particularly troublesome in this regard. Bleeding heart liberals fuss that we should welcome all refugees with open arms, but how are we to tell the difference between a person genuinely displaced by regional violence and a person — maybe even genuinely displaced — who is bent on causing havoc or death here in the U.S.? It’s not as if people always tell the truth about their intentions. Democrats should know this better than anyone, given their expertise in deception.