Terrorism Expert: ISIS Is “Probably Cutting Videos” of Donald Trump’s Response to Belgium Attacks

Alex Brandon/AP

Donald Trump wasted no time in backing torture (again) after this morning’s terrorist attacks in Brussels.

“Waterboarding would be fine” for Salah Abdeslam, one of the alleged participants in the massacre in Paris last November, Trump said on the Today Show. He’s previously said he’d like to do “a hell of a lot worse” than waterboarding to terrorism suspects, and on Tuesday he repeated his call to change the laws to allow further acts of torture: “If they could expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding. You have to get the information from these people.”

But terrorism expert Malcolm Nance, the head of the Terrorism Asymmetrics Project and a veteran of Navy intelligence, took Trump to task for doing the propaganda work of ISIS.

“Good God, they’re probably cutting videos of this right now,” Nance said on MSNBC about Trump’s comments. “Donald Trump right now is validating the cartoonish view that they tell their operatives…that America is a racist nation, xenophobic, anti-Muslim, and that that’s why you must carry out terrorist attacks against them…It’s irresponsible and it needs to stop.”

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate