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NEW YORK, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- While U.S. President Donald Trump has used Twitter to achieve a big success, Twitter can also be used to fight back, just as what former President Barack Obama's administration staff have done in the days since Trump assumed the presidency.
Obama's aides, advisers, speechwriters, spokespeople and a group of fact-checkers are flaming the social media debate around the controversial president and his executive orders.
The order Trump signed a week after his inauguration to temporarily ban citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the country, has been the most controversial among his dozens of executive orders so far, and has prompted widespread protests across the country.
The U.S. Justice Department has filed a notice of appeal seeking the reinstatement of the travel ban after the order was suspended late Friday by federal judge James Robart in Seattle.
Twitter users have also joined the fights over the legitimacy of the ban.
Colin Kahl, who served as a national security official under Obama, tweeted that "Trump doing his best to trash America's reputation. Americans doing their best to protect it."
The Georgetown University professor also slashed Trump's tweet which questioned the judge's ruling, saying: "I'm starting to think he might not understand how our immigration system works."
Obama's former senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer mocked Trump's pick for the Supreme Court by tweeting: "What are the odds that Trump is demanding more vetting for Syrian children than for the person he is about to nominate to the Supreme Court?"
"Banning refugees and religions strikes a blow to the core of American exceptionalism. It is a betrayal of who we are and how we lead," Obama's foreign policy adviser and speechwriter Ben Rhodes wrote on his twitter account.
Trump is still fighting on Twitter, with one of his latest tweets criticizing Judge Robart's ruling would put the United States "in peril," adding: "If something happens blame him and court system."
In response to this tweet, Obama's speechwriting director Jon Favreau tweeted: "The President tells Americans to blame our own judges for any future terrorist attack, and then lies about our vetting process. Again."
"This is really the first time in history where you have a huge cadre of former staff who can all broadcast their thoughts whenever they have them and fact check the current administration in real time," Yahoo News quoted former Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller as saying.
