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 The billionaire businessman said authorities "should be able to do
whatever they have to do" to gain information in an effort to thwart
future attacks.
"Waterboarding would be fine. If they can expand the laws, I would
do a lot more than waterboarding," Trump said on NBC's "Today"
program, adding he believed torture could produce useful leads. "You
have to get the information from these people."
Waterboarding, the practice of pouring water over someone’s face to
simulate drowning as an interrogation tactic, was banned by
President Barack Obama days after he took office in 2009. Critics
call it torture.
Trump's main Republican rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas,
suggested heightened police scrutiny of neighborhoods with large
Muslim populations.
"We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim
neighborhoods before they become radicalized," he said in a
statement.
Trump also called for increased law enforcement surveillance of
mosques in the United States.
"You need surveillance. You have to deal with the mosques, whether
we like it or not," Trump told Fox Business Network. "These attacks
... they're not done by Swedish people, that I can tell you."
 Islamic State claimed responsibility for Tuesday's suicide bomb
attacks on Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train in the
Belgian capital which killed at least 30 people.
Trump, who has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the
country, urged tougher measures to stop the flow of illegal
immigrants, particularly Syrian refugees, into America.
"As president ... I would be very, very tough on the borders, and I
would be not allowing certain people to come into this country
without absolute perfect documentation," said Trump, campaigning to
become the Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 election that will
decide on Obama's successor.
The Brussels attacks brought national security back to the top of
the presidential election agenda, possibly sharpening the division
between Trump’s isolationist approach to foreign policy and his
Republican rivals’ more traditional interventionist outlook.
On Monday, Trump expressed skepticism about the U.S. role in the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization and said the United States should
significantly cut spending on the defense alliance.
'THEY NEED MORE HELP'
Cruz criticized Trump's NATO proposal.
"The way to respond to terrorist attacks is not weakness. It’s not
unilateral and preemptive surrender. Abandoning Europe, withdrawing
from NATO, as Trump suggests, is preemptive surrender," Cruz told
reporters in Washington.
Earlier attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, have pushed
security issues to the forefront of the White House campaign debate.
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When 130 people were killed in Paris in November, the threat of
terrorism jumped from fifth to first on a Reuters/Ipsos poll list of
the country's most important problems and remained there until the
economy moved back to the top of the list in mid-January.
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said U.S.
military leaders have found techniques like waterboarding are not
effective.
"We've got to work this through consistent with our values," she
said on NBC, adding officials "do not need to resort to torture, but
they are going to need more help."
Clinton's Democratic rival, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont,
backed stronger intelligence-sharing and monitoring of social media
in the fight against Islamist militants, but opposed bolstered
surveillance of Muslim communities.
"That would be unconstitutional, and it would be wrong. We are
fighting a terrorist organization, a barbaric organization that is
killing innocent people. We are not fighting a religion," Sanders
told reporters.
Walid Phares, named by Trump this week as one of his foreign policy
experts, told Reuters the Brussels attacks would force Europe and
the United States to "reassess" counter-terrorism strategies in
"identifying the radicalized elements and also the type of
protection soft targets need."
Trump looks to take another step toward winning the Republican
presidential nomination in contests in Arizona and Utah on Tuesday,
aiming to deal another setback to the party establishment's flagging
stop-Trump movement.
He has a big lead in convention delegates who will pick the
Republican nominee, defying weeks of attacks from members of the
party establishment worried he will lead the Republicans to defeat
in November.
In Arizona, one of the U.S. states that borders Mexico, Trump's
hardline immigration message is popular and he leads in polls, while
in Utah Trump lags in polls behind Cruz.
In addition to the temporary ban on Muslims entering the country,
Trump has called for the building of a wall on the U.S.-Mexican
border to halt illegal immigration.
(Additional reporting by Alana Wise, Susan Heavey and Mark Hosenball
in Washington and Chris Kahn in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe
and Alistair Bell)
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reserved.]
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