Here are some of the things President-elect Donald Trump has said and promised to do once elected:
Trump praised the use of waterboarding, an interrogation technique now defined as torture by the U.S., adding “if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway for what they do to us.” - Campaign rally in Columbus, Ohio.
In the fight against Islamic terror groups, Trump said on Fox and Friends that when it comes to suspected terrorists, “you have to take out their families.” The purposeful killing of civilians is a war crime under the Geneva Convention, and is considered terrorism. Trump also told a crowd in Iowa that to defeat ISIS he “would bomb the shit out of them.” He also said recently on NBC’s “This Week” that the U.S. needs to “take the oil” from countries where ISIS holds territory. He said during the commander-in-chief town hall that the U.S. should’ve taken Iraq’s oil during the war. This is banned by the Geneva Convention.
Trump has vowed to pull the U.S. out of the UN Global Climate Accord, approve the Keystone XL pipeline, reverse most environmental regulations, and put a moratorium on any new regulations, including fracking, offshore drilling and coal mining/burning. He said in a November 2012 tweet that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese.” He has not reversed this statement.
Trump has vowed to throw Hillary Clinton in jail, and has called her and President Obama “literally the founders of ISIS.” He has not yet said whether he will investigate Obama for being a terrorist leader.
Trump’s main campaign promise is to build a 30-foot wall along the entire U.S./Mexico border. While Trump himself has said it would cost $10 billion or more, he has promised that Mexico will pay for it. While Mexican leaders have sworn to never pay for this wall, Trump said in a press release that he would compel them to pay by banning all money transfers to Mexico, canceling visas of Mexican immigrants, and threatening to re-negotiate trade treaties.
Trump has proposed a total ban on all Muslims entering this country, “until our leaders can figure out what the hell is going on.” Discrimination against a religious group by the government is banned by the U.S. Constitution. Trump has since stepped back from a total ban, now proposing what he’s called “extreme vetting” for people coming from certain countries with terrorist activities, although the details of this plan have not been explained.
Trump vowed to “open up the libel laws” in the U.S., making it easier to sue reporters who write negative stories about him and other politicians. “We’re going to have people sue you like you’ve never got sued before,” Trump said, referencing the press, at a rally in Fort Worth, Texas. During his campaign, Trump also banned a long list of news outlets and individual reporters from covering his campaign, including the National Review, the Des Moines Register, Univision, BuzzFeed, the Daily Beast, Fusion, the Huffington Post, and Mother Jones.
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This editorial was written by members of the Daily Lobo Editorial Board, and represents the views of the newspaper. The board can be reached at opinion@dailylobo.com.
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