Trump Asks, ‘If We Have [Nuclear Weapons], Why Can’t We Use Them?’

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Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:18 pm

If you are not already terrified by the prospect of a Trump presidency, perhaps this latest revelation will wake you up.

We have already seen that Trump has no problem increasing the availability of nukes, after decades of nuclear non-proliferation efforts. But this is worse. Much worse. Because it turns out, he doesn’t understand why he can’t use them.

According to Joe Scarborough Wednesday morning, a foreign policy expert was trying to advise Trump and three times in a one-hour briefing, Trump asked, speaking of nuclear weapons, “If we have them why can’t we use them?

Watch courtesy of Media Matters for America:

JOE SCARBOROUGH (CO-HOST): What concerns you most about Donald Trump?

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: How erratic he is, Joe. I can argue about this position or that position. I do that with the current president. But he’s inconsistent, and when you’re the head of a global superpower, inconsistency, unpredictability, those are dangerous things. They frighten your friends and they tempt your enemies. And so I would be very, very concerned.

HAROLD FORD JR.: General Hayden, Harold Ford, very, very quickly. Who amongst your peers that you respect greatly, whether they think like you or not think like you, that you know that’s advising Mr. Trump?

HAYDEN: No one.

MIKE BARNICLE: That’s a good answer.

SCARBOROUGH: I have to follow up with that, I’ll be careful here. Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump, and three times he asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked, at one point, “If we have them, why can’t we use them?”

BARNICLE: Wow.

SCARBOROUGH: That’s one of the reasons why he has — he just doesn’t have foreign policy experts around him.

BARNICLE: Trump? Trump asked three times whether we can use nuclear weapons?

SCARBOROUGH: Three times in an hour briefing, “Why can’t we use nuclear weapons?”

End of the world scenarios come first to mind. That’s why we don’t use nuclear weapons. During the Cold War, because each side had enough nukes to annihilate the other, they had a term for the resultant level of deterrence: MAD, or “mutual assured destruction.”

You know, because once the nukes start to fly, there are no winners. Only losers. Trump insists he is a winner, but every time he opens his mouth he gives the lie to those claims.

If we think we are having climate issues now, let’s consider the results of a nuclear winter. Some 75,000 years ago, the Toba eruption in Indonesia a brought about a volcanic winter, almost wiping out the human race and possibly reducing our worldwide population to some 3,000 to 10,000 people.

While current arsenals of nuclear weapons do not have the potential to cause that level of destruction in terms of destructive power, but it has long been argued that a full scale nuclear war does have the potential to bring about the extinction of the human race.

But then Trump thinks global warming is a liberal conspiracy, so he may well think that nukes are just giant hand grenades and kill only those they land on.

It wasn’t Trump who said, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” but that is what he aspires to be. Far from making America great again, he will destroy it, and the world along with it.

Given the possibility that Trump could have the power to cause our extinction, it is time, I think, that we recognize in Donald Trump somebody who is not only reckless, but catastrophically ignorant. In fact, our dictionaries are rapidly running out of words to describe somebody as dangerous as Donald J. Trump.

Photo: Trump superimposed by Hrafnkell Haraldsson over The BADGER explosion on April 18, 1953, as part of Operation Upshot-Knothole, at the Nevada Test Site. Photo public domain, courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office.

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Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen's Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.

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