WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Brussels is “a disaster city” where assimilation has failed, US Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump said Tuesday after a series of apparently coordinated explosions rocked the Belgian capital’s airport and a metro station.
At least 26 people were killed in the latest attacks to target Europe, and Trump wasted little time in saying it was more evidence that governments needed to crack down on extremists with any means possible – even using waterboarding – and that immigration policies had failed.
He reiterated his belief that the US should close its borders “until we figure out what’s going on.”
Anyone who tries to attack the United States will “suffer greatly,” Trump said, in typically blunt tones that have shaped his populist run for the White House, propelling him from outsider to firm favorite for the Republican ticket.
“Belgium is no longer Belgium. Belgium is not the Belgium you and I knew from 20 years ago, which was one of the most beautiful and safest cities in the world,” Trump told NBC.
“Belgium is a horror show right now. Terrible things are happening. People are leaving. People are afraid. This all happened because, frankly, there’s no assimilation.”
Asked what he would say to the American people in the immediate aftermath of a terror attack, he added: “We are going to be very vigilant and tough. We’re not going to allow it to happen to our country.
“If it happens, we’ll find the people who did it and they’ll suffer greatly.”
Speaking to Fox News, Trump — who has called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States — described Brussels as once being “a beautiful city, a beautiful place with zero crime. And now it’s a disaster city. It’s a total disaster.
“We have to be very careful in the United States. We have to be very, very vigilant as to who we allow into this country.”