Wednesday on CNN’s “AC360,” while discussing getting tougher on fighting terrorism Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump observed the Geneva Convention was something countries would adhere to until they started losing in an interview with host Anderson Cooper.
Partial transcript as follows:
COOPER: You would still want to go after the families of terrorists?
TRUMP: No, no, I didn’t reverse anything. I clarified very simply we have laws. We have to obey the laws. Now there must have to be one what —
COOPER: During the candidate of church would be against the law.
TRUMP: I didn’t say kill. We have to go after them. The family knows would have terrorists in that —
COOPER: What does that mean? Kidnapping them?
TRUMP: You have a terrorist you have we going to do something and it’s the only way you going to stop it. You know, I tell the story of General Pershing and take a look at General Pershing in 1890 in the Philippines, how he stopped terrorism. OK. You’ll take a look at it. It’s too long a story to tell on the tape. It will take the whole thing but it’s one of the very interesting and very powerful stories. Look, we’re going to have to be a lot tougher. We are playing with a different set of rules. ISIS chops off people heads. ISIS drowns people in steel cages and pulls up the cage an hour later. Everyone is gone, 40, 50, 60 people at a time.
COOPER: Were you said the other day we have to play the game, you said we got to play the game the way they play the game.
TRUMP: We have to play the game at a much tougher level that were plan.
COOPER: What does that mean though?
TRUMP: We have to expand those laws.
COOPER: Does that mean cutting off heads?
TRUMP: No, it doesn’t mean that but we have to expand the laws luck.
COOPER: What is explains the laws?
TRUMP: Anderson, lets me explain something we are playing at this level and they don’t care. They have no rules. And we have these rules that are very onerous. I mean our military is got brought in because —
COOPER: Geneva Conventions on war. There’s ways — there’s rules in a battle.
TRUMP: I know that, but, you know what, it’s funny. It’s very interesting what’s happens with the Geneva Convention. Everybody believes in the Geneva Convention until they start losing and then they say oh, let’s take out the bomb. OK. When they start losing. We have to play with a tougher set of rules. We have laws. We don’t allow water boarding. Think of this ISIS is — these are smart people. These are people that know the internet better than we do and we’re the ones that’s, you know, came up with it. ISIS is sitting around. They just chopped off 20 heads of Christians and others. They just drowned 40 people. And they are sitting around watching us arguing about waterboarding.
COOPER: When you say increase the laws and do more than waterboarding, what is that specifically?
TRUMP: I’ll work it with the generals. I’ll work with the generals.
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