What are Donald Trump’s thoughts about the threat of nuclear weapons? January 24, 2025

President Donald J. Trump shakes hands with Chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea Kim Jong Un Sunday, June 30, 2019, as the two leaders meet at the Korean Demilitarized Zone. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

At some point prior to the January 20 inauguration, in a windowless, secure room deep in the Pentagon, military officers briefed Donald Trump (for a second time) on protocols and procedures for using the nation’s nuclear weapons.  Since the President of the USA holds sole authority over any decision  to put nuclear weapons into battle, this seems as good a time as any to ask these questions:

  • What do we know about Donald Trump’s thinking on nuclear weapons?
  • Does Trump have any enthusiasm for nuclear disarmament, personally?   

Through a fog of alternative facts, President Trump displays an enigmatic mix of overconfidence and insecurity. But let’s examine what’s known, starting with his January 23 televised address to the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland. Responding to a question about the U.S. – China relationship, Trump said this:

“We’d like to see denuclearization.  In fact, with President Putin, prior to a — an election result, which was, frankly, ridiculous, we were talking about denuclearization of our two countries, and China would have come along.  China has a — a much smaller, right now, nuclear armament than us or field than us, but they’re — they’re going to be catching it at some point over the next four or five years. 

And I will tell you that President Putin really liked the idea of — of cutting way back on nuclear.  And I think the rest of the world, we would have gotten them to follow.  And China would have come along too.  China also liked it. 

Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear, and the destructive capability is something that we don’t even want to talk about today, because you don’t want to hear it.  It’s too depressing.

So, we want to see if we can denuclearize, and I think that’s very possible.  And I can tell you that President Putin wanted to do it.  He and I wanted to do it.  We had a good conversation with China.  They would have been involved, and that would have been an unbelievable thing for the planet.”

(Excerpted from a White House transcript)

Examining the actions that the Trump Administration took during his first term in office, 2016 to 2020, the picture is not an optimistic one: 

  • The United States disastrously withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a.k.a. the “Iran Nuclear Deal.” The U.S. also withdrew from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and Open Skies Treaty.
  • In 2017, Trump very publicly threatened North Korea with with verbiage that came quite close to a direct threat of nuclear attack, invoking “fire and fury” and threatening to “totally destroy” North Korea.   In 2018 he famously responded to Kim Jong Un that his American nuclear “button” was much bigger than Kim Jong Un’s.  
  • His diplomatic overtures to North Korea over nuclear weapons bore no fruit and indeed, since Trump’s first term as President, North Korea’s nuclear arsenal has grown exponentially and the security situation on the Korean peninsula has worsened.  
  • In his first term, President Trump also made problematic statements about nuclear proliferation to Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia.

For a little deeper dive into Donald Trump’s nuclear weapons worldview, PSR turned back the clock to April, 1984. Here is an excerpt from a William Geist article in New York Times Magazine

[Donald Trump said] “What does it all mean when some wacko over in Syria can end the world with nuclear weapons?”

He says that his concern for nuclear holocaust is not one that popped into his mind during any recent made-of-television movie. He says that it has been troubling him since his uncle, a nuclear physicist, began talking to him about it 15 years ago.

His greatest dream is to personally do something about the problem and, characteristically, Donald Trump thinks he has an answer to nuclear armament: Let him negotiate arms agreements – he who can talk people into selling $100 million properties to him for $13 million. Negotiations is an art, he says, and I have a gift for it.

(Excerpted from NYT Magazine, William Geist, “The expanding empire of Donald Trump” April 8, 1984)

Over the decades, Donald Trump has often invoked discussions he had about nuclear weapons dangers with his uncle, physicist John G. Trump of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  We can learn more details about his uncle and Trump’s foreign policy views in a March 27, 2016 interview with Maggie Haberman and David Sanger of the New York Times:

“I personally think it’s the biggest problem the world has, nuclear capability. I think it’s the single biggest problem. When people talk global warming, I say the global warming that we have to be careful of is the nuclear global warming. Single biggest problem that the world has. Power of weaponry today is beyond anything ever thought of, or even, you know, it’s unthinkable, the power. You look at Hiroshima and you can multiply that times many, many times, is what you have today. And to me, it’s the single biggest, it’s the single biggest problem. 

I talk sometimes about my uncle from M.I.T., and he would tell me many years ago when he was up at M.I.T. as a, he was a professor, he was a great guy in many respects, but a very brilliant guy, and he would tell me many years ago about the power of weapons someday, that the destructive force of these weapons would be so massive, that it’s going to be a scary world. And, you know, we have been under the impression that, well we’ve been, I think it’s misguided somewhat, I’ve always felt this but that nobody would ever use them because of the power. And the first one to use them, I think that would be a very bad thing. And I will tell you, I would very much not want to be the first one to use them, that I can say.”

(Excerpted from an interview transcript)

In 1986, Mr. Trump summoned Dr. Bernard Lown of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War to the Trump Tower for a meeting. Trump sought advice from Dr. Lown on negotiating nuclear arms agreements with Mikhail Gorbachev. 

“During this meeting, Lown says, the fast-rising businessman disclosed that he would be reaching out to then-President Ronald Reagan to try to secure an official post to the USSR in order to negotiate a nuclear disarmament deal on behalf of the United States, a job for which Trump felt he was the only one fit.”

According to Lown:  “And he said he would go to Moscow and he’d sit down with Gorbachev, and then he took his thumb and he hit the desk and he said, ‘And within one hour the Cold War would be over!’ I sat there dumbfounded. ‘Who is this self-inflated individual? Is he sane or what?’”

(Excerpted from “Donald Trump Angled for Soviet Posting in 1980s, Says Nobel Prize Winner”, Scott Feinberg, Hollywood Reporter, May 26, 2017)

What conclusions can we draw from these mixed messages? On the plus side, President Donald Trump is aware that nuclear weapons are fundamentally different than other weapons, he is concerned about nuclear war, and he favors agreements to limit and/or dismantle nuclear weapons.  On the minus side, President Trump’s first term increased rather than decreased nuclear weapons dangers.  Trump himself is mercurial in temperament, inexperienced in diplomacy and military affairs, and has appointed officials to his administration who carry extremely hawkish worldviews. The Project 2025 document, discounted by Trump but created by many Trump insiders, advocates for extreme policies such as accelerating the USA nuclear weapons buildup and preparing the Nevada test site for renewed nuclear testing.

Over the next four years, PSR members will need to be prepared for opportunities but also vigilant about new dangers. 

For further reading:

The New York Times Opinion editors appealed to Trump to pursue nuclear weapons disarmament

2016 CNN interview with Anderson Cooper

“How Trump was going to end the Cold War in the 1980s”,  Brian Rokus, CNN, June 2, 2017 

“Who Is Uncle John Trump? President Says ‘Brilliant Genius’ Professor Taught Him About Nuclear Weapons”Newsweek, June 12, 2018

“Donald Trump’s Nuclear Uncle” Amy Davidson Sorkin, April 8, 2016 in The New Yorker

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