In yet another case of the Donald Trump campaign’s rhetoric bleeding into the affairs of Congress, the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday addressed the businessman’s latest policy proposal: bringing back waterboarding.
“Just in the last few days, the issue of torture has arisen again,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the chairman of the committee, during a hearing on global threats that featuring testimony from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
“Isn’t it the fact that American values are such just that no mater what the enemy does we maintain a high standard of behavior?” McCain questioned the spy director.
Clapper agreed with the sentiment.
During last weekend’s GOP debate in New Hampshire, Trump unequivocally said he would bring back waterboarding. The Republican front-runner went a step further, saying he “would bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,” noting the brutality of the Islamic State toward prisoners.
“In the Middle East, we have people chopping the heads off Christians,” Trump boomed.
During a rally Monday night, the business mogul criticized his opponent, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for not forcefully endorsing waterboarding during the debate, and repeated a line from the audience referring to Cruz as a “pussy.”
On Tuesday, McCain argued that the nation “has paid a high price” for employing torture in the recent past.
It wasn’t the first time Trump’s remarks on the the campaign trail have moved Republican lawmakers to criticize him. Trump’s proposal last December to ban all Muslim from entering the US triggered a harsh rebuke from the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.)
“What was proposed yesterday is not what this party stands for, and more importantly, it’s not what this country stands for,” Ryan told reporters at the time.
Other Republican lawmakers, however, did not necessarily disagree. In a Dec. 10 Senate Judiciary Committee vote on a resolution condemning calls to bar individuals from the US based on their religion, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) launched into a 25-minute long speech defending the proposal, likening unspecified religions to ““strange and dangerous cults.” Sessions was one of four GOP committee members to vote against the resolution.
At times, Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric has found more than just a handful of Republican supporters on Capitol Hill. The Senate and House Judiciary Committees convened hearings last summer targeting “sanctuary cities”—a month after the real estate developer kicked off his campaign by attacking Mexicans coming across the Southern border as “drug dealers and rapists.”
