Donald Trump's Thinking on Nukes Is Insane and Ignorant
If one could adjectivize the president, there has never been anything Trumpier than Donald Trump's posture on nuclear weapons. It's an issue where he embraces contradictory thoughts in the same breath with routine. In candidate Trump's debate with Hillary Clinton on September 26, 2016, he said, "I would certainly not do first strike" and "I can't take anything off the table" within the space of seconds. In between, he pulled a Reagan and told a homespun tale on the subject, except his made no sense. "I looked the other night, I was seeing B-52s," he said (where? In his head? On Sixth Avenue?). "They're old enough that your father, your grandfather could be flying them," he added. "We are not keeping up with other countries."
Nukes are the ultimate Trump policy problem because it's a subject that requires scientific knowledge he completely lacks, while also forcing him to choose between two of his most sharply conflicting narcissistic affectations: the deal-making man of peace vs. the "I love war" Lieutenenant Schiesskopf-style missile-humping parade-master.
Remember, candidate Trump ran as a quasi-isolationist who was too smart to waste treasure and lives on pointless regional confrontations in Middle Eastern countries. His first major foreign policy address in April of 2016 was an extended diatribe against post-Cold War interventionism.
In it, he decried military adventures from Syria to Iraq to Libya that unleashed "civil war, religious fanaticism, thousands of Americans… killed… many trillions of dollars… lost…" etc. etc.
But Trump, like Americans generally, can't handle even the possibility of people thinking he's a wimp for a second. So even as he ran as an isolationist, an issue that probably won him some key votes – studies showed Trump did well in areas hit hardest by military casualties from our recent dumb wars – he also constantly hyped himself as someone so crazy and unpredictable, he just might use nuclear weapons (as if we needed to be told this!).
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/taibbi-donald-trump-on-nukes-is-insane-ignorant-w516568?utm_source=rsnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=020918_17
Lieutenenant Schiesskopf? Another apropos nickname for Trump.
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