It's a list inherited from the Obama administration. The best time to argue about whether this list stands up to scrutiny or not was years ago.
Edit: I'm not making comments about Trump's actions (specifically, I'm not defending what he did). As for whether this particular list stands up to scrutiny, that question should have been asked a long time ago.
Obama had veto power. How did republicans force it through?
What happened was Obama signed the bill imposing exceptions to the Visa Waiver Program in December 2015, and then his own DHS added the current list of middle eastern nations in February 2016.
It is the most tenuous argument to act like that was the work of the GOP.
The list was for increased border scrutiny and travel restrictions, created by a republican congress and passed as a string attached to a much larger bill. It was not an outright ban. And especially not a ban whose appeal priority would go to christians.
Bannon is a genius. The fact that he can co-opt partisans in the deflection of criticism with facile ideas like "Obama did it" is terrifying.
They do this constantly. See: Trump's tweet about imprisoning flag burners for a year and fining up to $100,000.
That was taken directly from a bill Hillary Clinton co-sponsored years earlier (though obviously with far less context or nuance).
They're very mindful to use some sort of liberal precedent when fanning their flames, giving them (and their flock) plenty of retaliatory talking points.
Half the entries on the list are from Congress, the other half were added by the Obama administration which was given the power to add to the list as it saw fit. Any strange omissions are therefore entirely on Obama's head. Also, if I'm reading the congressional record correctly the original, non-consolidated version that was not attached to anything else passed the House of Representatives with a substantial bipartisan majority, 407-19 - see https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/158/...
One reason this is interesting is that there there were some very widely-circulated - and of course false - claims on social media that the choice of countries was somehow influenced by Trump's business interests, and that the fact no-one from countries on the list had killed in the US proved Trump was inspired by racism or even an outright fascist. https://twitter.com/JamesMelville/status/825473088758374400 was typical of the genre. Snopes decided to show an uncharacteristic lack of interest in online rumours by not mentioning them. Naturally, the same people who were spreading those claims are now spreading the debunkings about how no, Trump's ban is nothing like Obama's.
Edit: I'm not making comments about Trump's actions (specifically, I'm not defending what he did). As for whether this particular list stands up to scrutiny, that question should have been asked a long time ago.