Asked by Good Morning America host George Stephanopoulos what he would do if he were in sitting in the Oval Office today, Trump answered, “We would strengthen up our borders; we would be very careful who we allow into our country….”
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Walid Phares, named by Trump this week as one of his foreign policy experts, told Reuters the Brussels attacks would force Europe and the United States to “reassess” counter-terrorism strategies in “identifying the radicalized elements and also the type of protection soft targets need”.
He continued, “And Brussels is different and Paris is different and lots of places are different”.
Officials “do not need to resort to torture, but they are going to need more help”, she said.
When pressed for specifics about what techniques he would deem appropriate, Trump said he would want to change laws so that waterboarding would be allowed, and if he could expand the law further, he would do “a lot more than waterboarding”.
Ted Cruz, the senator and Texan most likely to disrupt the Clinton-Trump showdown, suggested President Barack Obama bore some blame for what happened in Belgium. Look, we have to be smart, we have to be vigilant. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who responded flatly: “That’s not what we do in America”. We have to watch closely what’s going on.
“Frankly, the waterboarding, if it was up to me, and if we change the laws or have the laws, waterboarding would be fine. Because I say we have to have strong borders”. Trump insisted that the USA should “close up our borders”, and he also called for surveillance of Muslims, particularly at mosques (which I’d like to point out are actually houses of worship, and not terrorist meetinghouses). “But we have a real problem and people don’t have any idea what’s going on. Comments by Donald Trump espousing the virtues of torture are spoken by a person with no national security experience and who obviously knows little about how to obtain reliable and accurate intelligence”.
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton acknowledged Americans have a right to be frightened after a spate of recent attacks but said military leaders have found techniques like waterboarding are not effective. “And we have to be smart in the United States”. “We just don’t learn”.
And she said that tightening our borders to prevent Muslims from entering the country, as Trump proposes, “shows a lack of understanding of how our system does work”. “You have to get the information from these people”.
“That would be unconstitutional, and it would be wrong”, he said. “We are not fighting a religion”.
“Radical Islam is at war with us”, he said in a statement posted online.
Kasich issued his own statement of solidarity with Belgians and called terror attacks in Europe assaults “against our very way of life”.
In a news conference in Minneapolis later in the day, Kasich said the USA would have to reassemble a global coalition of European and Arab allies like the one from the first Gulf War to “destroy ISIS”.
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And the Republican front-runner, who has previously pointed to the rise in his poll numbers following the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris late a year ago, also expressed hope that the Brussels attacks would be a boon for him in Arizona and Utah, which vote Tuesday in the GOP primary.
