Phares defended Trump’s repeated statements on torture not as an actual policy, but as “a reaction to a very complex and difficult and challenging situation.” Trump is calling for torture “because we are in a political season,” he said, but in the White House “he’s going to be tasking experts to answer that question, and I’m not sure that the experts are going to recommend any form of torture.”

Speaking to NPR, Phares also seemed to draw a distinction between “torture” and “enhanced interrogation” techniques such as waterboarding. Defenders of such techniques commonly do not accept that they meet the definition of “torture.” Torture would violate current law, and has been called ineffective or unreliable by many specialists in interrogation. The Trump advisor appeared to favor only “enhanced” techniques that in his view fall short of torture.