Leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he would restore waterboarding terrorists under his administration.
In an interview on Sunday with former Democratic Party operative and former senior Clinton administration official George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week Trump said waterboarding is “peanuts” compared to what they’re doing to us.
A transcript of Trump’s comments was posted to Twitter by ABC’s Katherine Faulders.
Trump on @ThisWeekABC on waterboarding: "I would bring it back, yes." pic.twitter.com/dwMeg0loaO
— Katherine Faulders (@KFaulders) November 22, 2015
“STEPHANOPOULOS: You also told Yahoo! News that we have to be doing things that were unthinkable a year ago. I want to get into what you had in mind. For example, do you think we should bring back enhanced interrogation like waterboarding?”
“TRUMP: Well, we have to be strong. 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: So you’d bring back waterboarding?”
“TRUMP: We have–I would bring it back, yes. 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 James Foley when they chopped off his head. That’s a whole different level and I would absolutely bring back interrogation and strong interrogation.”
