News

Donald Trump Says He Would "Take Out The Families" To Defeat ISIS, & That's Not OK

by Jenn Rose

In a phone interview with Fox and Friends on Wednesday, real estate mogul and GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump said he'd “take out” the families of ISIS in order to defeat the Islamic State. Seriously. Multiple times. The interview began with Trump saying that President Obama “doesn’t know what he is doing” and comparing the president unfavorably to various generals. After he complained that “China doesn’t obey by the rules” and called Syrian president Bashar al-Assad a “bad guy,” the hosts redirected Trump towards the fight against ISIS. Trump claimed that “Turkey sort of likes ISIS more than they like others” and said that he would direct all military attention to ISIS, ignoring any other possible threats.

“I would knock the hell out of them,” said the former reality show host. When asked about civilian casualties, Trump said “I would do my best, absolute best,” to prevent them, but “we’re fighting a very politically correct war.” Apparently his “absolute best” doesn’t account for civilians who happen to be related to terrorists, though: “...and the other thing is with the terrorists, you have to take out their families. When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families,” he told the panel, who worked hard to keep neutral looks on their faces. “They- they care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. But they say they don’t care about their lives. You have to take out their families.” Former reality show contestant Elisabeth Hasselbeck quickly changed the subject to undocumented immigrants, or “illegals” in Fox-speak.

Hot take: You can’t just go around killing people’s families. We’ve all got that one black sheep, right? One drunk uncle, or pot dealer cousin? Well, unfortunately, some families’ black sheep join ISIS. In fact, The Hill reports that FBI Director James Comey testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee back in July that more than 200 U.S. citizens have traveled to Syria to join ISIS. Would Trump care to “take out” their families, or just the nameless, faceless brown people living half a world away?

Look, I’m no military strategist (and neither is Trump). But it doesn’t take a genius to know that spite-murdering innocent people is probably not the best way to fight terrorism. In fact, that’s… sort of terrorism itself, no? This seems like a good time to mention that Trump is still leading the polls by a pretty wide margin, and it is actually quite possible that this man will be given control of our country. I'm not feeling great about that at this point.

Image: Steve Pop/Getty Images News/Getty Images