Donald Trump, presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee, said during a "60 Minutes" interview on CBS that he's going to seek, from the White House, an "extreme vetting" process for immigrants – a slight deviation and softening of his earlier campaign calls for outright bans on Muslims trying to enter America.
"Call it whatever you want," Trump said, when asked if he's changed his mind about his previously announced policy to ban Muslims from U.S. entry.
Trump has also specified that his previously announced bans on Muslims were for a temporary period of time, so immigration officials could properly process that backgrounds of those seeking to come into America. He's also previously softened that view to clarify his intent was to keep out Muslims from nations with known terror ties.
The Sunday evening televised interview was further elaboration and clarification.
"Change territories, but there are territories and terror states and terror nations that we're not going to allow the people to come into our country," Trump said.
He went on, NBC News reported: "We're going to have a thing called 'extreme vetting.' And if people want to come in, there's going to be extreme vetting. We're going to have extreme vetting. They're going to come in and we're going to know where they came from and who they are."
Among the no-gos: Syrian refugees.
Trump said he is adamant to "not let people in from Syria that nobody knows who they are," a restriction that's based on geography and terror links, not religion.
His remarks are a furtherance of a December 2015 statement he made calling for a temporary but "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on."
A short time later, Trump told the Daily Mail his comments were aimed at halting the flow of potential terrorists into the United States.
He said, in that interview: "I don't want people coming in – I don't want people coming in from certain countries. I don't want people coming in from the terror countries. You have terror countries. I don't want them unless they're very, very strongly vetted."