Fox News’ Steve Doocy: Donald Trump “Hit It Out Of The Park” When He Endorsed Torture
If one thing has been made abundantly clear during this crazy election season, it is that Republican Presidential frontrunner and Eric Cartman impersonator Donald Trump can always rely on Fox & Friends to come to his defense, regardless of what he says. The Fox News morning program has been perhaps Trump’s biggest champion these past few months, more so than even MSNBC’s Morning Joe, which has gone all in on the Trump phenomenon. Of course, prior to announcing his candidacy, Trump used to appear weekly for a segment on F&F.
Over the past few days, The Donald has decided to let his white nationalist flag fly proudly, calling for the surveillance and closing of mosques, a national database for Muslims and even the possibility that they will need to wear ID badges. During an interview Sunday with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on This Week, Trump discussed those ideas, along with his insistence that “thousands” of Arabs were seen celebrating the 9/11 attacks in New Jersey. Stephanopoulos also brought up the use of torture and whether Trump was for it.
Below is from the transcript of the broadcast:
STEPHANOPOULOS: You’ve also told Yahoo! News that we have to be doing things that were unthinkable a year ago. I want to get into what you had in mind.
For example, do you think we should bring back enhanced interrogation like waterboarding?
TRUMP: Well, we have to be strong. You know, they don’t use waterboarding over there; they use chopping off people’s heads. They use drowning people. I don’t know if you’ve seen with the cages, where they put people in cages and they drown them in the ocean and they lift out the cage. And we’re talking about waterboarding.
We have to be tough —
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: So you’d bring back waterboarding?
TRUMP: We have to — I would bring it back, yes. I would bring it back. I think waterboarding is peanuts compared to what they’d do to us, what they’re doing to us, what they did to James Foley when they chopped off his head. That’s a whole different level and I would absolutely bring back interrogation and strong interrogation.
Well, this exchange gave Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy a full-on chubby. The goofy smile connoisseur not only signed on to Trump’s insistence that we need to bring back torture — you know, to show how TOUGH we are — but claimed that the celebrity billionaire hit it out of the park when he endorsed waterboarding.
“Well here’s the thing. I’m sure that George Stephanopoulos, being somebody who used to work for Hillary Clinton’s husband back in the day, was trying to pose a gotcha question but Donald Trump hit it out of the park. I’m looking at a number of, I would say a gigantic majority of people who are watching right now and have responded on the email machine are saying, why not? He makes a great point about, considering they’re chopping off heads and we are waterboarding, this enhanced interrogation technique, they think waterboarding is a great deterrent.”
OK. So an entertainer who dodged the draft multiple times in the ’60s and claims his prep school experience makes him better trained militarily than actual soldiers now wants to act all badass by calling for the United States to use torture. And these flag-waving, pretend patriotic, curvy couch sitters are absolutely in love with this kind of faux tough hyperbole because ‘Murica, or something. Because, as we all saw, it worked SO WELL in the aftermath of 9/11. I mean, we totally eradicated extremism in the Middle East by dehumanizing prisoners and treating them worse than dog shit.
This is going to get a lot worse over the next few months.
Below is video of the F&F segment, courtesy of Media Matters:
