March 22, 2016

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

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.”

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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