According to the Wikipedia article Guantanamo Bay detention camp § President Trump's statements on the camp:
President Donald Trump has vowed to keep the prison open and to use it to detain "bad dudes". Trump has stated, "I would bring back waterboarding, and I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding... Don’t tell me it doesn’t work—torture works... if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway, for what they’re doing to us."
The cited source leads us to a The New Yorker article Why Obama Has Failed to Close Guantánamo, which states:
Donald Trump has vowed to keep the prison open, and to “load it up with some bad dudes.” According to a leaked memo obtained by CNN, those prisoners will include American ISIS supporters—which, critics say, will likely mean American Muslims, deprived of their constitutional rights. “I would bring back waterboarding, and I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,” Trump has said, adding, in other appearances, “Don’t tell me it doesn’t work—torture works,” and “If it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway, for what they’re doing to us.”
This is unclear for me for the following reasons:
- The alleged quotation from Trump seems to be composed of at least two different statements from Trump, one coming from a leaked memo obtained by CNN and the other one coming from other appearances;
- It is unclear for me whether the part about waterboarding comes from a leaked memo or from other appearances;
- How credible is this leaked memo?
- Finally, the practice of composing a single statement out of a few smaller, out-of-context parts seems suspicious for me; for example, is it clear that Trump was referring to Guantanamo torture practices he had been condoning while he was saying that torture worked and was he referring to American ISIS supporters when he was saying that they deserved it anyway?
Bottom line: Has Trump's statement about torture at Guantanamo, as quoted by Wikipedia, accurately represent what Trump's has said?
