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We’re in a world of missiles folks

Published by digby on August 26, 2019

We’re in a world of missiles folks

by digby

I’m just so glad we don’t have a warmonger in the White House:

Recall this from the 2016 campaign:

COOPER: You said you worried about the proliferation of nuclear weapons…

TRUMP: Right.

COOPER: … the most. You also said, though, that you might support Japan and South Korea developing nuclear weapons of their own. Isn’t that completely contradictory?

TRUMP: No, not at all. Look, you have North Korea has nuclear weapons. And he doesn’t have a carrier yet but he has got nuclear weapons. He soon will have. We don’t want to pull the trigger. We’re just — you know, we have a president, frankly, that doesn’t — nobody is afraid of our president. Nobody respects our president.

You take a look at what’s going on throughout the world. It’s not the country that it was.

COOPER: But if you’re concerned about proliferation, letting other countries get nuclear weapons, isn’t that proliferation?

TRUMP: No, no. We owe $19 $trillion, we have another $2 trillion because of the very, very bad omnibus budget that was just signed. It’s a disgrace, which gives everything that Obama wanted. We get nothing. They get everything.

So that’s going to be $21 trillion. We are supporting nations now, militarily, we are supporting nations like Saudi Arabia which was making during the good oil days which was a year ago, now they’re making less but still a lot, $1 billion a day.

We are supporting them, militarily, and pay us a fraction, a fraction of what they should be paying us and of the cost. We are supporting Japan. Most people didn’t even know that. Most people didn’t know that we are taking care of Japan’s military needs. We’re supporting…

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Excuse me, excuse me, we’re supporting Germany. We’re supporting South Korea. I order thousands of television sets because I am in the real estate business, you know, in my other life, OK.

COOPER: It has been a U.S. policy for decades to prevent Japan from getting a nuclear weapon.

TRUMP: That might be policy, but maybe…

COOPER: South Korea as well.

TRUMP: Can I be honest are you? Maybe it’s going to have to be time to change, because so many people, you have Pakistan has it, you have China has it. You have so many other countries are now having it…

COOPER: So some proliferation is OK?

TRUMP: No, no, not proliferation. I hate nuclear more than any. My uncle was a professor was at MIT, used to (AUDIO GAP) nuclear, he used to tell me about the problem.

COOPER: But that’s contradictory about Japan and South Korea.

TRUMP: (AUDIO GAP) Iran is going to have it very — within…

COOPER: But that’s proliferation.

TRUMP: Excuse me, one of the dumbest I’ve ever seen signed ever, ever, ever by anybody, Iran is going to have it within 10 years. Iran is going to have it. I thought it was a very good interview in The New York Times.

COOPER: So you have no problem with Japan and South Korea having…

TRUMP: I thought…

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: … nuclear weapons.

TRUMP: At some point we have to say, you know what, we’re better off if Japan protects itself against this maniac in North Korea, we’re better off, frankly, if South Korea is going to start to protect itself, we have…

COOPER: Saudi Arabia, nuclear weapons?

TRUMP: Saudi Arabia, absolutely.

COOPER: You would be fine with them having nuclear weapons?

TRUMP: No, not nuclear weapons, but they have to protect themselves or they have to pay us.

Here’s the thing, with Japan, they have to pay us or we have to let them protect themselves.

COOPER: So if you said, Japan, yes, it’s fine, you get nuclear weapons, South Korea, you as well, and Saudi Arabia says we want them, too?

TRUMP: Can I be honest with you? It’s going to happen, anyway. It’s going to happen anyway. It’s only a question of time. They’re going to start having them or we have to get rid of them entirely.

But you have so many countries already, China, Pakistan, you have so many countries, Russia, you have so many countries right now that have them.

Now, wouldn’t you rather in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons? And they do have them. They absolutely have them. They can’t — they have no carrier system yet but they will very soon.

Wouldn’t you rather have Japan, perhaps, they’re over there, they’re very close, they’re very fearful of North Korea, and we’re supposed to protect.

COOPER: So you’re saying you don’t want more nuclear weapons in the world but you’re OK with Japan and South Korea having nuclear weapons?

TRUMP: I don’t want more nuclear weapons. I think that — you know, when I hear Obama get up and say the biggest threat to the world today is global warming, I say, is this guy kidding?

The only global warming — the only global warming I’m worried about is nuclear global warming because that’s the single biggest threat. So it’s not that I’m a fan — we can’t afford it anymore. We’re sitting on a tremendous bubble. We’re going to be — again, $21 trillion. We don’t have money.

COOPER: So you have no security concerns…

TRUMP: We’re using all of the money…

COOPER: … about Japan or South Korea getting nuclear weapons?

TRUMP: Anderson, when you see all of the money that our country is spending on military, we’re not spending it for ourselves; we’re protecting all of these nations all over the world. We can’t afford to do it anymore.

COOPER: But isn’t there benefit for the United States in having a secure Europe. Isn’t there benefit for the United States in having a secure Asia.

TRUMP: There’s a benefit, but not big enough to bankrupt and destroy the United States, because that’s what’s happening. We can’t afford it. It’s very simple.

Now, I would rather see Japan having some form of defense, and maybe even offense, against North Korea. Because we’re not pulling the trigger. The bottom line on North Korea is China, if they wanted to, they’re a tremendous supplier of North Korea. They have tremendous power over North Korea. If they wanted to, if they weren’t toying with us, Anderson, China would be the one that would get in and could make a deal in one day, okay…

And yet this imbecile became president of the United States anyway.

In light of all that, I don’t think you can possibly find this all that surprising:

President Trump has suggested multiple times to senior Homeland Security and national security officials that they explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States, according to sources who have heard the president’s private remarks and been briefed on a National Security Council memorandum that recorded those comments.

During one hurricane briefing at the White House, Trump said, “I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?” according to one source who was there. “They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they’re moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can’t we do that?” the source added, paraphrasing the president’s remarks.

Asked how the briefer reacted, the source recalled he said something to the effect of, “Sir, we’ll look into that.”
Trump replied by asking incredulously how many hurricanes the U.S. could handle and reiterating his suggestion that the government intervene before they make landfall.
The briefer “was knocked back on his heels,” the source in the room added. “You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting. People were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, ‘What the f—? What do we do with this?'”
Trump also raised the idea in another conversation with a senior administration official. A 2017 NSC memo describes that second conversation, in which Trump asked whether the administration should bomb hurricanes to stop them from hitting the homeland. A source briefed on the NSC memo said it does not contain the word “nuclear”; it just says the president talked about bombing hurricanes.

The source added that this NSC memo captured “multiple topics, not just hurricanes. … It wasn’t that somebody was so terrified of the bombing idea that they wrote it down. They just captured the president’s comments.”

The sources said that Trump’s “bomb the hurricanes” idea — which he floated early in the first year and a bit of his presidency before John Bolton took over as national security adviser — went nowhere and never entered a formal policy process.
White House response: A senior administration official said, “We don’t comment on private discussions that the president may or may not have had with his national security team.”

A different senior administration official, who has been briefed on the president’s hurricane bombing suggestion, defended Trump’s idea and said it was no cause for alarm. “His goal — to keep a catastrophic hurricane from hitting the mainland — is not bad,” the official said. “His objective is not bad.”

“What people near the president do is they say ‘I love a president who asks questions like that, who’s willing to ask tough questions.’ … It takes strong people to respond to him in the right way when stuff like this comes up. For me, alarm bells weren’t going off when I heard about it, but I did think somebody is going to use this to feed into ‘the president is crazy’ narrative.”

That’s because the president is crazy. And monumentally ignorant.

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