No, Trump didn’t really change his mind on torture
by digby
The recaps of Trump’s NY Times interview yesterday indicated that general Mattis had made him rethink his commitment to torture which surprised me since I’m convinced that brutality and dominance are central to his view of how the world works.
It turns out he didn’t. Here’s the quote:
General Mattis is a strong, highly dignified man. I met with him at length and I asked him that question. I said, what do you think of waterboarding? He said — I was surprised — he said, ‘I’ve never found it to be useful.’ He said, ‘I’ve always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I do better with that than I do with torture.’ And I was very impressed by that answer. I was surprised, because he’s known as being like the toughest guy. And when he said that, I’m not saying it changed my mind.
He was impressed and surprised because you’d think a guy called “Mad Dog” would be as tough as Donald Trump. But he’s not.
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