Donald Trump says the U.S. needs to bring back “strong interrogation” methods in its fight against the Islamic extremists.
During an interview televised Sunday morning the billionaire candidate was asked by “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos if the U.S. should bring back “enhanced interrogation like waterboarding?”
“Well, we have to be strong,” Trump said. “You know, they don’t use waterboarding over there; they use chopping off people’s heads. They use drowning people. I don’t know if you’ve seen with the cages where they put people in cages and they drown them in the ocean and they lift out the cage. And we’re talking about waterboarding. We have to be tough.”
Stephanopoulos pushed Trump to answer whether he would bring back waterboarding specifically.
“I would bring it back, yes,” Trump said. “I would bring it back. I think waterboarding is peanuts compared to what they’d do to us, what they’re doing to us, what they did to [American journalist] James Foley when they chopped off his head. That’s a whole different level and I would absolutely bring back interrogation and strong interrogation.”
Waterboarding is where a cloth is placed on the face of an individual and water is poured onto it so that it trickles into the air passages of the person, creating the feeling of drowning. Soon after his first inauguration, President Obama signed an executive order that banned the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding, which had been used while George W. Bush was president.
