According to NBC, Trump's request for more nukes prompted Tillerson to make that infamous "moron" remark -- which Trump also says is fake news.
The gist of the NBC piece is substantiated by one of Trump's own tweets.
That was in December; NBC spoke of a Pentagon meeting which occurred in July. I don't think that Trump became a peacenik during the intervening months. So the only real question is whether Trump wistfully longed for a tenfold increase. Is the number in the headline justified by the text?
Trump’s comments, the officials said, came in response to a briefing slide he was shown that charted the steady reduction of U.S. nuclear weapons since the late 1960s. Trump indicated he wanted a bigger stockpile, not the bottom position on that downward-sloping curve.
The president’s comments during the Pentagon meeting in July came in response to a chart shown on the history of the U.S. and Russia’s nuclear capabilities that showed America’s stockpile at its peak in the late 1960s, the officials said. Some officials present said they did not take Trump’s desire for more nuclear weapons to be literally instructing the military to increase the actual numbers.According to Wikipedia, the number of nuclear warheads in the American arsenal reached a high of 31,139 in 1965 and had been reduced to 7260 as of 2014. But: They are projected to go down to 3620 by 2022.
Is it believable that Trump would look at a chart similar to this one and muse about returning to the 1965 level? In my opinion, yes. He always wants to be at the top of any given mountain.
The article makes clear that Trump did not give an order to that effect, a point reiterated by journalist Courtney Kube (one of the four NBC authors) in this tweet. Apparently, the president made an impulsive, pie-in-the-sky remark which no-one around him took very seriously.
During the campaign, Trump indicated that he could not define the term "nuclear triad." Therefore, I have no difficulty believing that Trump is also unaware of the history of nuclear arms reductions.
Incidentally, the chart reminds us that the USSR's nuclear stockpile reached its highest point not long before the fall of the Soviet Union. Standing at the top of the mountain isn't everything.
5 comments:
Don't know how this will sound but it was immediately crystal clear to me after the train wreck we called an election that trump's occupation of the White House was going to be a nightmare. I've got to admit I actually underestimated just how bad the situation could become.
I agree with something you mentioned a couple of days ago, trump is probably goading North Korea into a first strike, or at least attacking South Korea, so he extend his control over the country.
I read the article, the headline is in the tradition of supermarket tabloid journalism. The print and broadcast news media puts Ad Revenue over journalism. One only has to look back to 2000 and how the news media skunked Al Gore because they knew Bush the Lesser would generate more headlines with the lunacy.
The New York Times, Washington Post, and the TV networks were willing foot soldiers in the war against Hillary Clinton as with Al Gore in the name of increased audience.
Ironic that now Trump wants to pull affiliates' broadcast licenses, pass the popcorn.
Mike, my original reaction was that NBC used an over-the-top headline. In fact, I originally wrote a very different post, or half-post. But then I looked up the history of America's nuclear stockpile and I realized that the headline actually made sense.
Although I think Trump really did say something that roughly approximated what we read about in the NBC report, I don't think that he was speaking seriously or after deep consideration. Trump is impulsive. We all know that. He's one of those guys who can't appreciate the virtue of an unexpressed thought. An idea pops into his noggin, and it shoots out of his mouth before he even realizes that his lips are moving.
I met a lot of guys like that back in the days when I hung out with conspiracy buffs. They just can't help themselves.
I wish Hillary wrote her book before the election, and everyone in America was forced to read it. It's a wishing for a unicorn thing.
Speaking of nuts and nukes, Joseph...H.A. Goodman showing yet again why he's really a fan of Trump:
https://twitter.com/HAGOODMANAUTHOR/status/918938551374319616
Good thing I wasn't eating when I read this, because I would have thrown up.
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