GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would authorize any means necessary for interrogating terror suspects, including waterboarding.
“Waterboarding would be fine,” he told hosts Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s “Today.“
“If they would expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding. You have to get the information from these people. We have to be smart and we have to be tough. We can’t be soft and weak, which is what we are right now.”
{mosads}Trump then rejected critics who charge that torture often produces false confessions and faulty intelligence.
“Yes, I am in that camp,” he said when asked if he believes torture is appropriate in scenarios where terrorist attacks are potentially imminent. “I don’t believe the other people. I am in the camp where you have to get the information, and you have to get it rapidly.
“We work within laws. [Terrorists] don’t work within laws. They have no laws. I would say that [interrogators] should be able to do whatever they have to do.”
At least 34 people are dead and more than 100 others wounded on Tuesday following a series of coordinated terrorist attacks across Brussels.
Two blasts rocked Zaventem airport, while another explosion targeted a metro station located near European Union buildings there. Brussels is now in lockdown after the bloodshed, with public transport and air travel into the Belgian capital halted.
Trump has frequently touted the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods as useful tools in counterterrorism. Critics charge that using such tactics harms civil liberties and encourage anti-American sentiment abroad.