Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump says that the families of the 9/11 attackers certainly knew what was going on and that there has to be “retribution” when it comes to terrorists’ families.
“Do you think the wives and the families knew exactly what was going to happen with September 11th?” Mr. Trump said in an interview that aired Thursday on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.”
Host Bill O’Reilly said he didn’t know, and Mr. Trump said: “Well I do, and I think they did.”
“We have to be much more vigilant, and we have to be much tougher,” Mr. Trump said. “We can’t allow this to happen: They take the wives, they put ’em on planes, they send ’em home. ’Let’s go home and let’s watch Daddy tonight on television knock down the World Trade Center’ — there has to be retribution. And if there’s not going to be retribution, you’re never going to stop terrorism.”
Mr. Trump said on “Fox and Friends” this week that while he would do his best to avoid civilian casualties in the fight against the Islamic State terrorist group, “you have to take out” terrorists’ families.
He told Mr. O’Reilly that “take out” means that “you have to wipe out their homes where they came from.”
“You have to absolutely wipe ’em out,” he said. “It’s the only way you’re going to stop terrorism. You have all these cells all over the place.”
Asked if he would kill the family members of terrorists, Mr. Trump said: “I don’t want to be so bold.”
“I want to tell you they would suffer,” he said. “They know what was going on. If you look at what happened with these terrorists, they put their wives on the planes — those wives knew exactly what was happening, the children, everybody knew.”
Asked how he knows that, Mr. Trump said: “Because I know. Because that’s the way life is. Because I’m a realist. That’s the way life works. The wives knew what the husbands were going to do.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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