Trump on a roll and letting it all hang out
by digby
It's a no-brainer, amirite?
He actually said "enemy of the state":
STEPHANOPOULOS: You did stir up a controversy with those comments over the database. Let’s try to clear that up.
Are you unequivocally now ruling out a database on all Muslims?
TRUMP: No, not at all. I want a database for the refugees that -- if they come into the country. We have no idea who these people are. When the Syrian refugees are going to start pouring into this country, we don’t know if they’re ISIS, we don’t know if it’s a Trojan horse.
And I definitely want a database and other checks and balances. We want to go with watchlists. We want to go with databases.
And we have no choice. We have no idea who’s being sent in here. This could be the -- it’s probably not, but it could be the great Trojan horse of all time, where they come in.
When I look at those migration -- when I look at the migration and the lines and I see all strong, very powerful looking men, they’re men and I see very few women, I see very few children, there’s something strange going on.
And if you look at what’s happened in Europe, a lot of bad things are happening in Europe. Just ask the folks that live in Germany, George. A lot of bad things are happening. So --
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: But the statistics do show --
TRUMP: We want to be smart.
We want to -- hey, George, we want to be vigilant. We have to be vigilant and we have to call -- is radical -- you know, we have to just say it. It’s radical Islamic terrorism, and that’s what it is. And we have a president that won’t even issue the term.
But when these Syrians come in, or wherever they are, because we’re not even sure that they’re coming in from Syria, if they’re going to come in, we have to be very, very vigilant. And a database would be fine for them and a watchlist is fine. We have to watch and see what we’re doing.
They should not come in, by the way. They should not be allowed to come in.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Just for the record, though, the statistics do show the majority of the refugees coming in are women and children.
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.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You’ve also said we have to consider closing mosques. Jeb Bush called that a sign of weakness.
TRUMP: Well, Jeb Bush is a weak person and that’s been defined very strongly. I mean, Jeb is a weak person who is a -- you know, I call him a low energy person. That’s what he is. I mean, call him anything you want, but Jeb is a person that will not solve a problem like this.
You have very, very tough people that you’re dealing with. They only understand strength. They don’t understand weakness. Somebody like Jeb, and others that are running against me -- and by the way Hillary is another one.
I mean, Hillary is a person who doesn’t have the strength or the stamina, in my opinion, to be president. She doesn’t have strength or stamina. She’s not a strong enough person to be president.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But what would be your criteria --
TRUMP: We’re dealing with --
STEPHANOPOULOS: -- for closing a mosque?
TRUMP: We’re dealing with very -- George, we’re dealing with very, very strong people. And you need strength and you need stamina.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I get that, but --
TRUMP: Hillary does not have that.
STEPHANOPOULOS: -- I want to get the details though.
What would be your criteria for closing a mosque?
And how does that square with the First Amendment?
You’ve said your top priority would be to preserve and protect our religious liberties.
Is that only for Christians?
What are your criteria for closing a mosque?
TRUMP: Well, I don’t want to close mosques; I want to surveil mosques. I want mosques surveiled. We were doing it New York City for a while until the worst mayor that New York City has ever had got elected --
STEPHANOPOULOS: All mosques?
TRUMP: -- De Blasio, which was a fluke. And all I would do, certainly there are certain hot spots and everybody knows they’re hot spots.
And let me tell you, the people that are involved in those mosques, they know who the bad ones are and they know who the good ones are, but they don’t talk. And we have to surveil the mosques -- and we were doing it.
We were doing it recently until De Blasio closed them up in New York City. We were doing it recently. We have to surveil the mosques.
And big material and good material, from what I understood, from a very good source, was coming out of those mosques. We were learning a lot. And they were stopping problems and potential problems by learning what was happening.
Hey, look, I don’t want to close up mosques but things have to happen where, if you’ve got -- you have got to use strong measures or you’re going to see buildings coming down all over New York City and elsewhere.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You’ve also talked about you want to keep the terror watchlist but, under current law, individuals on the terror watchlist and the no-fly list have been allowed to buy guns and explosives.
Are you OK with that?
TRUMP: We have to have a watchlist, and if that watchlist has somebody that’s -- you know, we have -- you know, we have the laws right now. We have the laws already on the books as far as Second Amendment for guns, and as you know I’m a big, big, really big proponent of the Second Amendment.
If in -- I’ll give you an example. If in Paris some of those people, those -- and if you had some of those people had guns, you wouldn't have had the horror show that you had with nobody --
STEPHANOPOULOS: But why should someone on the watch list --
TRUMP: -- out of hundreds of people had guns --
STEPHANOPOULOS: -- be able to have a gun?
TRUMP: -- no, no. You -- if people are on a watch list or people are sick, you have already -- this is already covered in the legislation that we already have, George. It's already fully covered.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, but under current law --
TRUMP: But we have --
STEPHANOPOULOS: -- people on the watch list --
TRUMP: -- if we have an enemy of state --
STEPHANOPOULOS: -- are allowed to buy guns.
TRUMP: Listen, George, if we have an enemy of state, I don't want to give him anything. I want to have him in jail, that's what I want. I want to have him in jail.
But if those people in Paris had guns in that room, it would have been a shootout and very few people would have been hurt by comparison to the number that were hurt.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But yesterday...
TRUMP: I'll tell you who would have been hurt, the bad guys would...
STEPHANOPOULOS: But yes or no?
TRUMP: -- because they were the only ones that had the guns.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Mr. Trump, yes or no, should someone on the terror watch list be allowed to buy a gun?
TRUMP: If somebody is on a watch list and an enemy of state and we know it's an enemy of state, I would keep them away, absolutely.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, you made -- you raised some eyebrows yesterday with comments you made at -- at your latest rally -- and I want to show them, relating to 9/11.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Hey, I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, the police say that didn't happen and all those rumors have been on the Internet for some time.
So did you meek -- misspeak yesterday?
TRUMP: It did happen. I saw it.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You saw that...
TRUMP: It was on television. I saw it.
STEPHANOPOULOS: -- with your own eyes.
TRUMP: George, it did happen.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Police say it didn't happen.
TRUMP: There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down. I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down -- as those buildings came down. And that tells you something. It was well covered at the time, George.
Now, I know they don't like to talk about it, but it was well covered at the time.
There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not good.
STEPHANOPOULOS: As I said, the police have said it didn't happen.
In case you were wondering he went up in the polls this week.
Update: Oh and this happened too:
Trump was asked to weigh in on his supporters’ actions on Fox & Friends Sunday morning. “Maybe he should have been roughed up,” he said. “It was disgusting what he was doing.”
The Republican frontrunner compared what happened at his rally to a Black Lives Matter protest at a Bernie Sanders event, which prompted the Democratic candidate to release a detailed racial justice plan. “This is not the way Bernie Sanders handled his problem, I will tell you, but I have a lot of fans and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy, a troublemaker, looking to make trouble,” Trump said.
