Trump says he wouldn’t take use of nuclear weapons ‘off the table’
Donald Trump refused to take the use of nuclear weapons off the table in any situation, including in Europe or the Middle East, during a wide-ranging town hall on MSNBC.
The GOP presidential front-runner said he would consider using a nuclear weapon if the U.S. were attacked by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, according to an MSNBC transcript of the interview released Wednesday afternoon.
“Somebody hits us within ISIS, you wouldn’t fight back with a nuke?” he said.
When host Chris Matthews asked if the real estate mogul could definitively say he wouldn’t use nuclear weapons, he responded: “I would never say that. I would never take any of my cards off the table.”
Matthews pressed him, asking if he would consider using nuclear weapons in Europe.
“No, I don’t think so,” Trump said, but he again said he wouldn’t definitively write off the option.
In a New York Times interview published over the weekend, Trump stressed the importance of unpredictability in his foreign policy. He told Matthews Wednesday that “you’d be a bad negotiator” for taking any strategy off the table.
He called nuclear weapons “sort of like the end of the ball game.”
“I’m not going to use nuclear, but I’m not taking any cards off the table,” he said.
Reality
The world freaked the fuck out upon hearing a candidate for the President of the United States was willing to use nuclear weapons against them should terrorists be found on their soil.
- Japan, a country with a pacific constitution and knows first hand the power of nuclear weapons, was so concerned, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe felt the need to respond publicly, saying, “whoever will become the next president of the United States, the Japan-U.S. alliance is the cornerstone of Japan’s diplomacy.”
- South Korea, a country technically at war with the nuclear state North Korea, just had to deal with an H-bomb test by North Korea just a few weeks prior. This would not be the best time to threaten to pull out troops. The South Korean government reaction has been more focused on Trump’s assertion that South Korea is not paying its way. Furthermore Daniel Pinkston of Troy University said it would play into North Korea’s hands. “The hardliners in Pyongyang would just love such an outcome because if that were to occur, it would completely justify their nuclear status … and validate Kim Jong Un’s policy line as absolutely brilliant and absolutely correct.”
For the record, Japan spends more than $2 billion a year for the privilege of hosting U.S. forces, while South Korea pays close to $900 million, meaning it’s cheaper to the U.S. to keep our forces there than bring them home.
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