Clearly, my hard-hitting expose of Trump’s idiocy in saying that the military would carry out every one of his commands to commit war crimes must have made a difference because he spun around so fast on the issue that his toupee ended up facing the wrong way.
He just released this statement to the Wall Street Journal:
Leading GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump said Friday he wouldn’t order the U.S. military to break international laws, addressing criticism from military and legal experts that his policies regarding torture and killing the family members of terrorists would violate the Geneva Convention.
Mr. Trump, in a statement to The Wall Street Journal, said he would “use every legal power that I have to stop these terrorist enemies. I do, however, understand that the United States is bound by laws and treaties and I will not order our military or other officials to violate those laws and will seek their advice on such matters. I will not order a military officer to disobey the law. It is clear that as president I will be bound by laws just like all Americans and I will meet those responsibilities.”
This appears to be a reversal from Thursday night’s GOP debate in Detroit, when Mr. Trump stood by earlier proposals to do things that were a “hell of a lot worse” than waterboarding terrorist suspects and also authorize the military to kill family members of terrorists.
“I’ve always been a leader,” he said Thursday night. “I’ve never had any problem leading people. If I say do it, they’re going to do it. That’s what leadership is all about.”
Well, that’s good. But it really makes you wonder what kind of leader this guy would be. He’s just telling the mob whatever they want to hear, and then when he realizes he’s saying really stupid crap, he flip flops on it, just as he has already with immigration yesterday night. How can you trust anything this guy says?
And what if he reverses course again, and puts our troops in legal and moral peril by giving them illegal orders? At least with George W. Bush, he honestly believed he was within the constraint of law in ordering waterboarding. It was only after Obama was elected that he approved their being prosecuted. But with Trump, he was openly advocating for orders that he knows are illegal.
Unbelievable.