North Charleston, S.C.
Donald Trump's stump speech, which usually sounds like a one-hour stand-up comedy act, is highly repetitive as most stump speeches are. But last night, his speech turned dark as he added some new material to the mix. As an example of how the United States needs to get tough, Trump favorably recalled an apocryphal story about executing Muslim terrorists with bullets dipped in pig's blood.
After discussing the barbarism of ISIS and his belief that the United States needs to use tactics much worse than waterboarding, Trump told an almost certainly false story about General Pershing's execution Muslim terrorists in the Phillippines. "I read a story, it's a terrible story, but I'll tell you," Trump said. "Early in the century, last century, General Pershing--did you ever hear--rough guy, rough guy. And they had a terrorism problem. And there's a whole thing with swine and animals and pigs, and you know the story. They don't like that. They were having a tremendous problem with terrorism."
After Pershing caught 50 terrorists, "he took 50 bullets, and he dipped them in pig's blood," Trump said. "And he had his men load his rifles and he lined up the 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the 50th person, he said, 'You go back to your people and you tell them what happened.' And for 25 years there wasn't a problem, okay?"
"We better start getting tough and we better start getting vigilant, and we better start using our heads or we're not gonna have a country, folks," Trump added.
Trump's comments came after he discussed his position on waterboarding. (See the 31-minute mark of this video). When he was asked during the debate about waterboarding, Trump said, "I'm thinking to myself, they chop off heads. Not since medieval times--James Foley--not since medieval times do they chop off heads. Chop off heads? Who the hell ever heard of this? We're in now the worst period of maybe ever."
"The big question is is it torture or not? In other words, it's so borderline, it's like your minimal, minimal, minimal torture," Trump said of waterboarding. "I said I feel great about it."
"And then I said something that got me in a minor bit of trouble because it wasn't politically correct," Trump added. I said, but I think we should go much, much, much further than waterboarding."
When he told the apocryphal story about Pershing less than a minute later, Trump did not explicitly state that he endorsed religious persecution of Muslims as a means of fighting terrorism. But that was the clear implication of his remarks. And he desecrated the memory of an American hero to do it.