South Carolina – Donald Trump is defending his support of waterboarding by citing a largely unsubstantiated tale of a U.S. general who supposedly halted Muslim attacks in the Philippines in the early 1900s by shooting the rebels with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood.
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The story about Gen. John Pershing’s efforts to quell the Moro Rebellion around 1911 has been widely discredited.
But Trump brought it up during a rally in North Charleston the night before the South Carolina primary.
He says after the alleged incident, “For 25 years there wasn’t a problem, OK?”
Trump adds, “So we better start getting tough and we better start getting vigilant, and we better start using our heads or we’re not going to have a country, folks.”
Trump says waterboarding is “minimal, minimal, minimal torture” compared with the tactics used by Islamic State militants.