'Ridiculous': Donald Trump dismisses CIA director's stance against waterboarding

PAMELA ENGEL
Updated
CIA director: I will not allow waterboarding, despite campaign rhetoric
CIA director: I will not allow waterboarding, despite campaign rhetoric

Donald Trump called the CIA director's stance against waterboarding "ridiculous" on Monday, arguing that the US should allow it because terrorists in the Middle East are chopping off heads.

CIA Director John Brennan said in a Sunday interview with NBC News that his agency would ignore waterboarding orders from any future president.

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Trump, the Republican presidential frontrunner, told "FOX & Friends" on Monday that Brennan's comments were "ridiculous."

The real-estate mogul has repeatedly advocated for using waterboarding, which the US has done in the past and is widely regarded as torture. But Trump argues that the US won't be able to beat terrorist groups like ISIS (also known as the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh) without using "strong tactics."

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"They chop off heads and they drown people in cages with 50 in a cage and big, steel, heavy cages. Drop them right into the water, drown people, and we can't waterboard and we can't do anything and we're playing on different fields," Trump said Monday.

He continued:

We have a huge problem with ISIS, which we can't beat, and the reason we can't beat them is we won't use strong tactics, whether it's this or other things. So I think his comments are ridiculous.

Trump then imagined what ISIS terrorists would think about the US refusing to use waterboarding against them.

"Can you imagine these ISIS people sitting around eating and talking about this country won't allow waterboarding and they just chopped off 50 heads?" he said.

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