The frontrunner to lead the Pentagon under President-elect Trump may have just talked the new commander in chief out of waterboarding suspected terrorists, according to a report.
Trump praised retired Gen. Marine Jim Mattis in a wide-ranging interview Tuesday with New York Times reporters and editors, saying Mattis was being “seriously, seriously considered” to serve as the next secretary of defense.
But Mattis, who previously served as the head of U.S. Central Command, is against the use of waterboarding in interrogating terrorism suspects and may have convinced Trump of the same during their conversations in recent days.
“He said ‘I’ve never found it to be useful,’ ” Trump said of Mattis, also saying that the former general told him, “Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple beers and I’ll do better.”
Trump went on to say that torture is “not going to make the kind of difference that a lot of people are thinking.”
During a Republican primary debate in February, Trump said he “would bring back waterboarding and I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
While Mattis may be against torture, other officials close to the next president still support it. Rep. Mike Pompeo, who will lead the CIA under Trump, supports Trump’s previous statements that waterboarding should be reinstated. And Sen. Tom Cotton, a veteran himself and an early supporter of Trump, said this month on CNN that waterboarding isn’t torture.
If Trump opts to listen to those who support repealing the prohibition on torture, he will face opposition on Capitol Hill, which banned waterboarding.
“I don’t give a damn what the president of the United States wants to do or anybody else wants to do. We will not waterboard. We will not torture,” Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said over the weekend.
