"I don't think
it's tough enough," Trump says of waterboarding.
Speaking at a campaign
rally in St. Clairsville, Ohio, he said of the terrorist group ISIS,
"We have to fight so viciously and violently because we're dealing with
violent people."
"What do you
think about waterboarding?"he asked the
crowd. "I like it a lot," he said to cheers. "I don't think it's
tough enough."
The comments, which
came in the wake of the bomb and gun attack on Istanbul's Ataturk airport that killed scores,
were "about as
Trumpian as you could get," according to one commentator.
Democratic
presidential rival Hillary Clinton, for her part, responded to the Turkish
attack by calling for
the U.S. to "deepen our cooperation with our allies and partners in the
Middle East" to confront terrorism. "Such cooperation is essential to
protecting the homeland and keeping our country safe," she said.
The presumptive Republican nominee has previously embraced the torture technique, saying in the last Republican presidential debate before the New Hampshire primary, "I would bring back waterboarding, and I'd bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding."
He also said following
the deadly Brussels terror attacks in March that if he were commander-in-chief,
"waterboarding would be fine," adding, "If they could expand the
laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding."
During the Ohio speech, Trump also denounced the Trans-Pacific Partnership and
compared it to rape.
The trade deal was
"done and pushed by special interests who want to rape our country, just a
continuing rape of our country. That's what it is, too," he said.
Jezebel writer Joanna Rothkopf called it
"an obviously despicable turn of phrase for anyone who has been the victim
of sexual assault, faces the constant threat of assault, or has any sympathy
for people who do."