From the March 22 edition of CNN's The Situation Room:
CNN Grants Trump An 11-Minute Phone Interview Where He Advocated Torture After Brussels Attacks
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
WOLF BLITZER (HOST): If you were president, Mr. Trump, what would you do, how would you question Salah Abdeslam, one of the ringleaders of the Paris attacks who was arrested the other day in Brussels?
DONALD TRUMP: That's the man I'm talking about, and he was arrested in an area that everybody knew he was there, but they didn't turn him in. The Muslim community did not turn him in, and they should have turned him in. And right now we have a lot of people, and a lot of people think he may have led this attack, he may have been the one who did the attack. Or it was done in retribution, and what I would do is I would -- look, I think we have to change our law on, you know, the waterboarding thing, where they can chop off heads and they can drown people in cages and heavy steel cages and we can't waterboard. So we have to change our laws, and we have to be able to fight at least on almost equal basis. We have laws that we have to obey in terms of torture. They have no laws whatsoever that they have to obey.
[...]
BLITZER: The military people say they oppose torture, that it's not part of the U.S. Military Code of Conduct.
TRUMP: I disagree. I don't believe they do. I don't believe it, I don't believe it. I think they're told to say that politically. I think they believe in in 100 percent. You talk to Gen. Patton from years ago, you talk to Gen. Douglas Macarthur, I will guarantee it, these were real generals, and I guarantee you they would be laughing. Well right now they're crying, and right now they're spinning in their graves as they watch this stupidity go on.
BLITZER: Mr. Trump, I just wanted to point out it was the CIA who was engaged in the waterboarding after 9/11. The U.S. military deliberately said they didn't want to have any part of the waterboarding because it wasn't part of their Military Code of Conduct. That's why it was left to civilians working at the CIA with the authorization of the Justice Department, of course, and the Bush administration.
Previously:
Tell The Media: End Donald Trump's Extraordinary Phone Privilege
Watch CBS's John Dickerson Press Donald Trump On Advocating Waterboarding
Fox Anchor Defends Donald Trump's Call To Bring Back Waterboarding Of Suspected Terrorists