Donald Trump unveiled his foreign policy team earlier this week and one of his advisers is already downplaying the Republican presidential front-runner’s call to “go beyond waterboarding” during interrogations of suspected terrorists.
“This is a reaction to a very complex and difficult and challenging situation,” Walid Phares, a professor of national defense and Fox News contributor, told NPR Wednesday in regards to Trump’s response to the terrorist attacks in Brussels.
“I think Mr. Trump, because we are in a political season, he’s making those statements, but when he will come to the White House … then he’s gonna be tasking experts to answer that question, and I’m not sure that the experts are gonna recommend any form of torture,” he added.
During an appearance Tuesday on Fox News, Trump said he “would go beyond waterboarding.”
“You catch a guy last week and it looks like retaliation for his capture,” the billionaire said, referring to last Friday’s arrest of Salah Abdeslam, the leading suspect and most-wanted fugitive from the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris.
“If they would have put him to the grill, 10 minutes after he’s captured, he probably would have ratted them out,” Trump claimed, adding that Tuesday’s attacks in Brussels could have been prevented if Abdeslam had been tortured into revealing other attacks were being planned.
“I don’t think that in his semantics he said we need to torture. He said we need to have enhanced or a different or an alternative,” Phares said of Trump’s comments. “I know it’s gray, but he did not provide a clear-cut position that he is going to be torturing.”
Phares is one of five individuals currently advising the leading GOP candidate on foreign policy, Trump told the Washington Post’s editorial board Monday. The others are Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Joe Schmitz and retired Gen. Keith Kellogg.
“I accepted the task because I think there needs to be a major change in our policy — general policy — toward the [Middle East],” Phales said Wednesday.
