WASHINGTON (WCMH)– Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump says Belgium authorities should perform “the waterboarding” and “more” as he weighed in on the Brussels terror attacks that left 31 people dead.
“The waterboarding would be fine. You could expand the laws more than waterboarding to get the information from these people,” Trump said on the TODAY Show.
“If it was up to me and if we changed the laws or have the laws, waterboarding would be fine and if they want to, as long as it’s, you know we work within the laws. They don’t work within the laws,” he added.
Earlier in the month, Trump also endorsed torture techniques despite it being illegal.
“If I say do it, they’re going to do it. That’s what leadership is all about,” he said at the debate referring to military and intelligence officials even if it breaks U.S. and international law. “They won’t refuse, they’re not gonna refuse me,” he said at the March 4 Republican debate.
After the statement by Trump, former top military officials refuted his claim and said the military would not conduct illegal activity.
Trump continued to say a terrorist attack like Brussels would not happen if he were in the White House because of his stance on border access.
“You know this is a subject that is very near and dear to my heart because I have been talking about it more than anybody else, and it’s why I’m probably number one in the polls, because I say we have to have strong border, we have to be very vigilant and careful who we allow into our country,” Trump said.
Hillary Clinton also weighed in on TODAY about the attacks.
“It’s unrealistic to say we’re going to completely shut down our borders to everyone. That would stop commerce, for example, and that’s not in anybody’s interest,” she told Savannah Guthrie and Matt Lauer in her first interview since the attack.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz held a similar tone to Trump’s during a press conference Tuesday.
Cruz also blamed “failed” immigration policy and said the same thing would happen to the United States if Syrian refugees were admitted.
“It is time for us to implement serious vetting,” he said. “When you don’t define the enemy we don’t have designs to keep them out.”
Cruz did call Trump wrong in his belief to retreat from NATO.
“It would be a major victory for ISIS,” Cruz said.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich also focused on Syrian refugees, even though there’s no evidence that the attackers in Brussels were posing as Syrian refugees.
“We and our allies must rededicate ourselves to these values of freedom and human rights. We must utterly reject the use of deadly acts of terror,” he said in a statement. “We must also redouble our efforts with our allies to identify, root out and destroy the perpetrators of such acts of evil. We must strengthen our alliances as our way of life and the international system that has been built on our common values since the end of the Second World War comes under challenge from these and other actors of evil.”
The last candidate to comment on the news, was Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Sanders called for the immediate destruction of ISIS , and called the attacks “cowardly”.What others are clicking on:
