New York state Sen. Greg Ball (R) on Monday night reiterated his belief that Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be tortured even though he is a U.S. citizen.

During a tense interview, CNN’s Piers Morgan repeatedly asked Ball whether he was OK with torturing American citizens. While he refused to condone torture as a government policy, he said he was not opposed to personally torturing American citizens such as Tsarnaev.

ADVERTISEMENT

“I’m telling you as Greg Ball, if personally put in a room with anybody from the most current scumbags to Osama bin Laden I’m telling you what I would do. As far as policy of the United States, you’ve got to take it up with your man Obama,” Ball explained.

He later said he was “firmly” in support of torture if it could help save American lives.

The New York Republican has repeatedly defended his support of torture since tweeting about it over the weekend.

In a separate interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night, Ball remarked he was speaking “from my heart” and acknowledged his comments might not help his reelection.

He also described Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) as a “complete idiot” because she said Americans could defend themselves with shotguns rather than so-called assault weapons. He said he was afraid of where the country was headed.

ADVERTISEMENT

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube by CNN, below:

[Note: Updated after publication]