On Donald Trump’s Enthusiastic Endorsement of Torture
After his absolutely disgusting statement last night enthusiastically endorsing torture “a hell of a lot worse than water-boarding,” Donald Trump went on Meet the Press today and — of course — doubled down.
Trump told Chuck Todd he “would go a lot further than water-boarding,” then refused to explain what he meant by “a lot further.”
But clearly, he’s talking about even more extreme forms of torture.
Note that when Trump said this last night at the New Hampshire debate, he got a round of wild cheers and applause from the conservative audience. This highlights one of the horrible facts about torture; it doesn’t just demean and degrade the victims, it also debases the torturers. When the Bush administration opened the door to this kind of abuse of prisoners, they set loose a very dark side of the conservative movement — and those are the people and forces Donald Trump is now exploiting.
Listen to Trump’s reaction as Chuck Todd tries to argue that America shouldn’t be a country that tortures prisoners; he brushes it off by sarcastically saying, “Oh, they can do it but we can’t.” He reduces the moral argument against torture to a simplistic game of getting even.
Trump talks about “medieval times” in this video as a negative thing, but it’s clear he wants to bring America right back into those dark ages, and he has an audience that’s eager to go there.