Photo: AP

At a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Tuesday, presumptive Republican nominee and aspiring strongman Donald Trump declared his admiration for Saddam Hussein, “He was a bad guy—really bad guy,” Trump said. “But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good.”

“They didn’t read them the rights. They didn’t talk. They were terrorists. Over,” Trump continued. “Today, Iraq is Harvard for terrorism.” Trump was presumably referring to the power vacuum left by Hussein’s overthrow and subsequent execution—a vacuum filled first by years of brutal sectarian war, and now by ISIS, an extremist group with roots in the prison camps set up by occupying American forces.

Predictably, the Hillary Clinton campaign pounced on Trump’s statements—a welcome distraction, surely, from James Comey’s damaging non-indictment Tuesday of the presumptive Democratic nominee.

“Donald Trump’s praise for brutal strongmen seemingly knows no bounds. He has applauded the strength China showed in the Tiananmen Square massacre, offered admiration for Kim Jong Un’s murderous consolidation of power in North Korea, and consistently lavished praise on Vladimir Putin,” Clinton’s top foreign policy aide, Jake Sullivan, said in a statement.

“Tonight, Trump yet again lauded Saddam Hussein as a great killer of terrorists, noting with approval that he never bothered to read anyone their rights. In reality, Hussein’s regime was a sponsor of terrorism—one that paid families of suicide bombers who attacked Israelis, among other crimes. Trump’s cavalier compliments for brutal dictators, and the twisted lessons he seems to have learned from their history, again demonstrate how dangerous he would be as Commander-in-Chief and how unworthy he is of the office he seeks.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan, meanwhile, spent the day on Tuesday apologizing for and distancing himself from the man he reluctantly endorsed: in the morning for Trump’s anti-Semitic Twitter memes, and in the afternoon for his equivocal admiration for a bloodthirsty dictator. “[Hussein] was one the 20th century’s most evil people,” Ryan said. “He was up there. He committed mass genocide against his own people using chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein was a bad guy.”

As it happens, this was not the first time Trump has praised the actions of the so-called Butcher of Baghdad, who tortured dissidents and used rape as a political weapon. In fact, his declaration on Tuesday is almost word for word the same as one he made in February: “You know, Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, but one thing about him: He killed terrorists. Now, Iraq is Harvard for terrorists. You wanna become a terrorist? Go to Iraq.”

Well. At least he’s getting more consistent.