GOP frontrunner Donald Trump suggested a plan to defeat ISIS during an interview with 60 Minutes’s Scott Pelley, challenging the current tactic—“We’re fighting ISIS and Assad has to be saying to himself, “They are the nicest or dumbest people that I’ve ever imagined.”
“I would end ISIS forcefully. I think ISIS, what they did, was unbelievable what they did with James Foley and the cutting off of heads of everybody. I mean, these people are totally a disaster,” Trump vowed when Pelley asked what he would do to defeat ISIS.
Trump continued, “Now, let me just say this, ISIS in Syria, Assad in Syria, Assad and ISIS are mortal enemies. We go in to fight ISIS. Why aren’t we letting ISIS go and fight Assad and then we pick up the remnants? Why are we doing this?”
“Let me get this right.” Pelley questioned, “So, we lay off ISIS for now? Lay off in Syria, let them destroy Assad? And then we go in behind that?”
“That’s what I would say,” Trump answered. “Yes, that’s what I would say.”
Trump continued, “If you look at Syria, Russia wants to get rid of ISIS. We want to get rid of ISIS. Maybe let Russia do it. Let them get rid of ISIS. What the hell do we care?”
Pelley then asked what Trump would do in Iraq with ISIS.
“Look, with ISIS in Iraq, you got to knock them out. You got to knock them out. You got to fight them. You got to fight them,” Trump answered, adding, if needed, he would put boots on the ground.
During the interview, Trump also stressed the need to have a strong military, something he has been vocal about during his campaign. “I want to have a military that’s so strong, so powerful, so modern, has the greatest equipment in the world, and that everybody says, ‘We’re not going to mess with them.’ And we don’t have that now,” he told Pelley.
“We don’t have leadership,” Trump added