2015–2016 Campaign: Trump Advocates Waterboarding 'and Much Worse' and Killing Terrorists' Families

What happened

On ABC's "This Week" on November 22, 2015, Trump, then a candidate for the Republican nomination, said he would "absolutely" bring back waterboarding: "I think waterboarding is peanuts compared to what they 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." ABC noted that the United Nations has defined waterboarding as torture.

On Fox & Friends on December 2, 2015, he went further: "The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families." The next day Bill O'Reilly asked him repeatedly whether that meant killing them, and he did not answer directly (CNN). At the CNN debate in Las Vegas later that month, a student's question put to him that the proposal "violates the principle of distinction between civilians and combatants in international law." Trump replied that he "would be very, very firm with families" (PolitiFact).

In February 2016 he said he was convinced "torture works" and that "we should go much stronger than waterboarding." Former CIA director Michael Hayden said: "if you want somebody waterboarded, bring your own damn bucket." Current and former CIA officials told NBC News the agency would refuse such orders. Congress had written President Obama's ban on the techniques into law the year before.

Legal analysis

What the proposals describe. PolitiFact asked experts in international law, who agreed that deliberately killing the non-combatant family members of terrorists would violate Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which binds the United States in its conflicts with non-state groups (the Supreme Court so held in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 2006, as PolitiFact notes). It would also violate the customary prohibition on making civilians the object of attack reflected in Additional Protocol I, Article 51(2). Professor Richard D. Rosen called it "a gross violation of the law of war and a war crime." Professor David P. Fidler described it as a proposal "to use acts of violence to spread terror among civilians." Waterboarding and harsher methods would violate the Convention against Torture, to which the United States is a party and which admits no exceptions.

Rome Statute. The proposals describe acts that would be war crimes under Article 8(2)(c)(i) (murder of persons taking no active part in hostilities) and 8(2)(e)(i) (intentionally directing attacks against civilians). But a war crime requires an act, committed in the context of an armed conflict. In 2015 Trump held no office and commanded no forces. Public advocacy by a private person is not an Art. 8 crime, and the Rome Statute criminalises direct and public incitement only for genocide (Art. 25(3)(e)). The crime type is none.

Strongest defence argument. These were campaign statements, often hyperbolic. Trump never specified that "take out" meant killing, and nothing was done. The defence succeeds on the legal question: no crime was committed by saying these things. It does not alter what the statements were. Trump made them repeatedly, kept them after experts and rivals told him they described war crimes, and as a candidate for commander-in-chief.

Why this grade

Significant. Rhetoric is not an act, and this entry records rhetoric only. The significant grade covers rhetoric that normalises political violence without a rights violation against a specific victim. These are statements, not conduct, made before Trump held any power. The archive records them because they are documented, repeated statements of intent by the person who later commanded US forces. Entries on later conduct can cite them: see the Yakla raid of the first term and the 2026 "no quarter" statements. No international crime is in play at the Art. 53(1) level for these statements, so the entry carries no warCrimeClassification.