Tonight. This is one of the backward and nasty Executive Orders the president has issued. Also today thousands of antiabortion protesters gathered in washington for the annual march for life. Mike pence told the crowd the president would announce a Supreme Court nominee soon and trump hinted strongly at the person hes choosing. The person i pick will be a big, big i think people are going to love it. I think evangelicals, christians will love my pick. And well be represented very fairly. Jeff zeleny begins our coverage tonight out front at the white house. Trump signing a flurry of Executive Orders this week, up to 14, but these on immigration, do they really have teeth . Reporter indeed they do. The ones that he signed late today, they do sort of play out exactly what he talked about in the campaign, Extreme Vetting. It should come as no surprise, but they are going at the heart
of refugees coming here to the country, particularly syrian refugees. The white house just moments ago actu
could do it without congress. something congress is likely to take issue with. it s something i have the right to do, something i can impose if i want. we are getting along actually very well with the mexican government. we ll see what happens. reporter: a week into his presidency, he said it s too early to say whether he will lift sanctions imposed by president obama against russian president vladimir putin. he s set to talk with putin by phone on saturday. after being criticized for his praise of the russian leader, mr. trump took a more measured approach today. how the relationship works out i won t be able to tell you that later. i ve had many times where i d thought i d get along with people and i don t like them at al all. and i ve had some i didn t think i would have much of a relationship and it turned out to be much of a relationship. reporter: the president said he believes waterboarding and other forms of torture work but would follow the lead of james
since medieval times, would i feel strongly about waterboarding? as far as i m concerned, we have to fight fire with fire. now, with that being said, i m going with general mattis, i m going with my secretary, because i think pompeo is going to be phenomenal. i m going to go with what they say. but i have spoken, as recently as 24 hours ago, with people at the highest level of intelligence, and i asked them the question, does it work, does torture work, and the answer was yes, absolutely. that is president donald trump saying he will defer to his national security team on the very important issue of torture. but as you heard right there, he absolutely believes it works. this on top of a report that the administration is considering reopening cia black sites. other reports also say the defense secretary james mattis and cia director mike pompeo, that they were blindsided by this memo. let s bring in rick santorum,
do i think it works? absolutely. steve: here s the thing about donald trump, i don t know if you have noticed, he is not a p.c. guy. he will do anything in his power to keep us safe. he said he would ask people at the highest level of the intelligence community. evidence has asked them, does torture work, they have told him, according to this, yes. absolutely it works. brian: i would actually wrestle with this word. it is enhanced interrogation. nobody is for torture. it s how you define what it takes to get the most out of a terrorist quickly noord to make sure nothing blows up at times square or serious tower. jim mitchell wrote a book about it. he was contracted by the cia to come up with enhanced interrogation practices including sheikh mohammed and the worst of the worst. he chronicles in his book we don t get bin laden without it and half of these guys don t understand what al qaeda is without it. here is jim mitchell. i think we do have to look at the techniques and determine
his word, absolutely works, but he conceded that he would follow the lead of his defense secretary james mattis and cia director mike pompeo, i have to read for you this is trump s verbatim quote we have to fight fire with fire. with that being said, i m going with general mattis, i m going with my secretary because i think pompeo is going to be phenomenal, i m going with what they say but have spoke with the highest officials about does torture work, yes, absolutely the president went on to say i will rely on pompeo and mattis and my group and if they don t want to do it that s fine, if they do, i will work toward that end. i want to do within the bounds