President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet with active duty service members Tuesday afternoon at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. | Getty Obama to warn against waterboarding as Trump prepares for office

President Barack Obama on Tuesday plans to warn against some of the most aggressive counterterrorism strategies, including waterboarding, which President-elect Donald Trump has suggested he may bring back.

Obama is scheduled to meet with active duty service members Tuesday afternoon at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, before delivering what will be his final national security address as president. Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters Monday that Obama is expected to highlight his record over the past eight years while advancing what he believes is a sustainable counterterrorism policy for the next administration.


“I think you’ll hear him talk again about the need to have a sustainable approach in which we adhere to the rule of law and we are upholding our values in everything that we’re doing, precisely because this is a long-term, enduring effort," Rhodes said. "We need to see our status as a nation of laws and our commitment to our values as a strength and not a weakness.”

Rhodes stressed that Obama’s speech was planned in advance of the Nov. 8 election, suggesting the president’s remarks aren’t taking aim at Trump. But much of the message Rhodes told reporters they can expect Obama to convey runs counter to Trump’s campaign rhetoric.

Trump, for instance, has said he “would bomb the s--- out of” the Islamic State, remarked that “torture works” and advocated for the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique. He has, however, signaled an openness to soften his positions, especially on waterboarding.

Obama, Rhodes advised, will detail how his administration has worked to strengthen counterterrorism policies — including its efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay and its approach to detention and torture, among others.

“I think you’ll see him, in the context of a lot of the rhetoric that we’ve heard over the last several years, making the point that, you know, not only have we not been harmed by the fact that we don’t use enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding, we’ve actually been strengthened because it’s easier to get other nations to cooperate with us,” Rhodes said. “And, frankly, we get good intelligence from the interrogation teams that work to get information from terrorists that we’ve detained.”

As Trump continues to interview candidates for his secretary of state, Obama will also highlight the key role diplomacy plays in foreign affairs.

“He’ll also talk about the fact that diplomacy and development have to be a part of our long-term approach to these issues so that we’re resolving conflicts, we’re preventing conflicts,” Rhodes said, noting diplomacy’s role in stopping the proliferation of Iran’s nuclear weapons without having to go to war.

“The goal … is at a fairly high level to pull all this together and to lay out here’s what the approach of the Obama administration was, here’s what President Obama did as commander in chief, here’s the record that we can lift up in terms of dismantling terrorists networks, bringing troops home, strengthening partners and adhering to the rule of law and high standards that are consistent with our values, here’s the foundation that we wanna hand off the next administration and here’s how we believe a sustainable counterterrorism policy can draw upon the lessons of the last eight years,” Rhodes said.