I originally posted this on January 27, 2017.
UPDATE May 9, 2018:
I just found an article from The Guardian published Nov. 23, 2015, which I missed. The video is amazing. It’s the most chilling 45 seconds I've ever seen. He obviously relishes fantasizing about torture. And the crowd, of course, went wild.
Donald Trump on waterboarding: 'Even if it doesn't work they deserve it'
Donald Trump touted the benefits of waterboarding in a campaign rally on Monday night, telling a crowd that “you bet your ass” he would bring it back into use.
Addressing thousands of people in Columbus, Ohio, the Republican frontrunner praised waterboarding, an interrogation method that has been called torture. “I would approve more than that,” he said.
Trump told supporters: “Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I would. In a heartbeat. I would approve more than that. It works.”
The Republican frontrunner then added “… and if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway for what they do to us”.
This is from the Washington Post article about his rally praise of torture:
Donald Trump on waterboarding: ‘If it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway.’ It also has a video you can view if you have an online subscription.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said Monday he not only would bring back waterboarding, the controversial interrogation technique discontinued by the Obama administration, but also would "approve more than that," even if such tactics prove ineffective.
"Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I would — in a heartbeat," Trump said to loud cheers during a rally at a convention center here Monday night that attracted thousands. "And I would approve more than that. Don't kid yourself, folks. It works, okay? It works. Only a stupid person would say it doesn't work."
Trump said such techniques are needed to confront terrorists who "chop off our young people's heads" and "build these iron cages, and they'll put 20 people in them and they drop them in the ocean for 15 minutes and pull them up 15 minutes later."
"It works," Trump said over and over again. "Believe me, it works. And you know what? If it doesn't work, they deserve it anyway, for what they're doing. It works."
At the rally Trump continued to claim he watched "fairly large numbers" of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the 9/11 terrorist attacks, further circulating a story that was discredited by New Jersey officials years ago.
Of course, Gina Haspel is in the news as she heads to the Senate for her confirmation hearing. It is astounding that the man who planned 9/11, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, wants six paragraphs he wrote about Haspel’s role in his torture be submitted to the Senate committee.
New York Times: Ms. Haspel ran a black-site prison in Thailand where another high-level detainee was tortured in late 2002. But it is not known whether she was involved, directly or indirectly, in Mr. Mohammed’s torture. Mr. Mohammed was held in secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland.
In the weeks after his capture, an Intelligence Committee report said, Mr. Mohammed was subjected to the suffocation technique called waterboarding 183 times over 15 sessions, stripped naked, doused with water, slapped, slammed into a wall, given rectal rehydrations without medical need, shackled into painful stress positions and sleep-deprived for about a week by being forced to stand with his hands chained above his head.
While being subjected to that treatment, he made alarming confessions about purported terrorist plots — like recruiting black Muslims in Montana to carry out attacks — that he later retracted. They were apparently made up, the Senate report said.
This is what I wrote in January 2017.
We know Trump lives in a world where alternate reality and reality get mixed up with what seems to be a daily basis. We know he doesn’t read and loves to watch TV. We know it seems like he lives in episodes of The Twilight Zone. He also may live inside TV shows which play on his paranoia. After all, he considers the clinically paranoid Alex Jones (of Infowars and Prison Planet) one of his pals. Watch his “explosive” 2015 interview with Jones. Or don’t, just check this out:
Alex Jones, a voice of the so-called "alt-right" and perpetrator of conspiracy theories, told listeners that he received a call from President-elect Donald Trump over the weekend thanking Jones and his supporters for aiding in his victory.
The online radio host, who casts doubt on the 2012 Newtown elementary school shooting that left 26 people — mostly children — dead, told listeners that he had received a call from Trump, who also spoke with world leaders from the United Kingdom, Russia, France and China in the days following his win.
"On my way here, Donald Trump gave me a call," Jones explained. "And I told him, 'Mr. President-elect, you're too busy, we don't need to talk,' but we still spent over five minutes.” from Infowars’ Alex Jones Says Trump Made Thank You Call on NBC News.
Considering Trump’s emphatic belief that torture works, I think it is vital we remind him that TV shows where the heroic anti-hero saves the world by brutally getting a terrorist to reveal where the nuclear bomb is hidden (within a time span of just one day) — if you were a fan you know how many times Jack Bauer did that from one season to the next.
Attention Mr. President, Jack Bauer wasn’t real. He was a fictional character. Don’t believe me, look it up on Wikipedia? He was played by Keifer Sutherland.
Of course, Bauer only resorted to torture when he absolutely had to. Cut to the timer on the bomb: 75 minutes 12 seconds, 11 seconds, 10 seconds, and counting.
Jack wasn’t bad. He wasn’t a sadist. He wasn’t a bully. Mr; President, you could learn that from him.
He did what he had to do to save the world or the country, and did it eight times over 192 episodes. He was loyal to his friends and had a compassionate side. But then, all of this was penned by talented screenwriters.
Mr. President, you ought to catch up on Keifer Sutherland’s latest TV series where he plays the “Designated Survivor” who becomes president when terrorists blow up the Capital building during the State of the Union address. He's a perfect role model for you to follow as president. He knows he’s unprepared, he is willing to admit that there are many things he doesn’t know… and eager to learn.
He’s a reluctant president. Modest, sincere, smart but not a genius.
You could model yourself on “The West Wing’s” Jed Bartlett (even though he also has a Wikipedia page, alas he’s really Martin Sheen); but that would be too much to hope for.
Related:
www.huffingtonpost.com/…