“I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me”
by digby
Apparently, this is the list of President-elect Trump’s national security priorities as provided to the Pentagon:
Pentagon memo outlining the incoming Trump administration’s top “defense priorities” identifies defeating the Islamic State, eliminating budget caps, developing a new cyber strategy, and finding greater efficiencies as the president-elect’s primary concerns. But the memo, obtained by Foreign Policy, does not include any mention of Russia, which has been identified by senior military officials as the No. 1 threat to the United States.
“People there now would be pretty concerned to see Russia not on the list,” said Evelyn Farkas, a former senior Pentagon official who worked on Russia policy before leaving in 2015.
I don’t have an opinion on where Russia should appear on the list of national security priorities but this list is strange. Sure, I can see why Trump would make ISIS the number one priority but it’s still daft. They do not present an existential threat to the US. (Well, maybe in an indirect way by helping Donald Trump gin up fear of Muslims.) But eliminating budget caps and finding greater efficiencies as the number two and four priorities for the defense department? That’s odd.
And the idea that Trump is worried about cybersecurity is a dark joke. But then he, of all people, knows just how risky it is and even he may have figured out that it may not always swing in his favor. On the other hand, his idea of “cyber-security” and our idea of cyber security may be very, very different.
And then there’s this:
Hugh Hewitt: “Mr. Trump, Dr. Carson just referenced the single most important job of the president, the command, the control and the care of our nuclear forces. And he mentioned the triad. The B-52s are older than I am. The missiles are old. The submarines are aging out. It’s an executive order. It’s a commander-in-chief decision.
“What’s your priority among our nuclear triad?”
Trump: “Well, first of all, I think we need somebody absolutely that we can trust, who is totally responsible, who really knows what he or she is doing. That is so powerful and so important.”
“And one of the things that I’m frankly most proud of is that in 2003, 2004, I was totally against going into Iraq because you’re going to destabilize the Middle East. I called it. I called it very strongly. And it was very important.”
“But we have to be extremely vigilant and extremely careful when it comes to nuclear. Nuclear changes the whole ballgame. Frankly, I would have said get out of Syria; get out – if we didn’t have the power of weaponry today. The power is so massive that we can’t just leave areas that 50 years ago or 75 years ago we wouldn’t care. It was hand-to-hand combat.”
“The biggest problem this world has today is not President Obama with global warming, which is inconceivable, this is what he’s saying. The biggest problem we have is nuclear – nuclear proliferation and having some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon. That’s in my opinion, that is the single biggest problem that our country faces right now.”
Hewitt: “Of the three legs of the triad, though, do you have a priority? I want to go to Sen. Rubio after that and ask him.”
Trump: “I think – I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.”
The man is an imbecile. But then you knew that.
Here are nine other terrifying things Donald Trump has said about nuclear weapons.
omg.
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