"You know, they don't use waterboarding over there; they use chopping off people's heads," Trump said Sunday on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." Waterboarding, a method of torture in which water is poured over the face of an immobilized prisoner to simulate drowning, is "peanuts" compared with that, Trump said. He said he "would absolutely bring back interrogation and strong interrogation."

Ben Carson, running 4 percentage points behind Trump in the latest Bloomberg Politics national poll, taken Nov. 15-17, declined to say whether he'd favor waterboarding, during an appearance on the same program.

"I'm not one who is real big on telling the enemy what we're going to do and what we're not going to do," Carson said.

Trump seemed to moderate earlier comments that were taken as support for a U.S. government registry of Muslims, saying he wants a database for refugees coming into the country from Syria.

'Checks and Balances'