Donald Trump thinks the United States is “stupid” for releasing detailed reports of CIA torture techniques implemented after 9/11, and doesn’t believe that the contents of the documents obtained by the Senate Intelligence Committee are all that “horrible.”
“We go for sleep deprivation and [terrorists] go for chopping off people’s heads, and then we’re horrible people, because sleep deprivation is a horrible form of torture, and waterboarding and all,” Trump said while phoning into Fox News on Monday. “Nobody can tell me we don’t get information with things such as that.”
Trump gave his opinion on the matter while talking to the hosts of “Fox & Friends” about the hostage crisis in Sydney, Australia, during which an armed 49-year-old Muslim man seized a café, filled with dozens of people, earlier Monday morning. The standoff ended when Australian police stormed the building.
The three hosts of the morning talk show agreed with the reality star when chiming in periodically.
“They were just following orders,” Elisabeth Hasselbeck said in reference to the CIA agents torturing terror suspects.
Co-host Brian Kilmeade added: “The Vice President says, ‘Well, look how great a country we are. We admit we made mistakes, and then we think we’re so much better because we tell everyone we made mistakes.’ I don’t agree with that. For one thing, I’m not sure they made any mistakes. We didn’t act out of fear — we did whatever we did to stop the next attack. That’s why we hired these guys.”
Trump then blasted the Obama administration for wanting to “release actual pictures of what took place during the tortures.”
“That’s going to make us look really nice, too, especially to our allies all over the world, who are petrified to even talk to us because we’re so stupid,” Trump said.
The wealthy businessman appears to be confused, though, because the White House is actually preparing to explain to a federal judge in New York why it should have the right to withhold those photographs, which depict the brutal treatment of detainees in military detention facilities.
“As soon as the next attack happens, everyone’s going to want to go back to the torture,” Trump said. “After 9/11, everybody felt strongly about it. It was fine. Years go by, people forget the thousands of people that were killed horribly by these maniacs, and now all of the sudden they’re saying, ‘Oh, the torture! We shouldn’t have it at all.’”