WASHINGTON—Dismissing concerns that the controversial interrogation method constituted torture, President Donald Trump told reporters Thursday that waterboarding does not even come close to the excruciating torment he himself experiences at every waking moment. “Prisoners who are forced to endure a few hours of simulated drowning hardly experience the unrelenting horror that tears at my psyche night and day,” said Trump, adding that being strapped to a chair in a filthy concrete cell and repeatedly suffocated was a “stroll in the park” compared to the cruel and inhuman anguish his mind is subjected to literally every single second. “What is having gallons of water forced into your lungs compared to the nightmare that has never once released its grip on me? Waterboarding only brings a prisoner to the brink of death. I die a thousand times a day.” Trump went on to say that unlike the victims of the brutal interrogation technique, he was relentlessly tormented by the miserable fact that he deserved everything that was happening to him.

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