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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Sunday advocated bringing back waterboarding of terrorism suspects and dug in on creating a database to track Muslims in the United States.
The billionaire real estate mogul and former reality TV star is leading the race for the Republican nomination for the fourth straight month, with Republican establishment candidates such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio far behind.
Trump’s standing in national Republican presidential polls has only solidified since recent Islamic militant attacks in Europe, particularly the Nov. 13 strikes on Paris that killed at least 130 people and wounded hundreds of others. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks.
The upsurge in violence has put pressure on the candidates who are political outsiders, primarily Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who have little foreign policy or national security experience.
Trump has pledged to be the toughest of all candidates toward people posing threats to the U.S. On Sunday he said on ABC’s “This Week” that he supported waterboarding on terrorism suspects — a practice that human rights advocates consider to be torture.
“I would bring it back, yes. I would bring it back. I think waterboarding is peanuts compared to what they’d do to us,” he said.
The first reference to a database came in a Trump interview with Yahoo News published Thursday when he was asked about requiring Muslims to register in a database or carry a form of special identification noting their religion.
Trump was pressed on the idea of a registry by an NBC News reporter Thursday evening while the candidate campaigned in Iowa.
Asked if there should be a database system for tracking Muslims in the United States, Trump said, “There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases.” The reporter asked if that was something Trump would put in place as president. Trump replied: “I would certainly implement that. Absolutely.”
In an interview on Fox News Channel on Friday evening, Trump tried to clarify his position. “I want a watch list for the Syrian refugees that (President Barack) Obama’s going to let in if we don’t stop him as Republicans,” he said.
The idea for a database drew sharp rebukes from his Republican rivals and disbelief from legal experts who consider it unconstitutional.
On ABC Sunday, Trump was asked if he rules out a database on all Muslims in the U.S.
“No, not at all,” Trump said. “I definitely want a database and other checks and balances. We want to go with watch lists. We want to go with databases.”
Trump has also voiced support for additional surveillance of certain mosques and closing some of them as a way to contain the terrorist threat in the U.S.
In the ABC interview, Trump refused to rule out an independent bid for president.
