On Friday, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough said President-elect Donald Trump endorsed a nuclear arms race during a brief phone conversation they had with him earlier that morning.
“Mika asked the president-elect when we had the opportunity what his position was on — trying to clarify the tweet yesterday regarding the nuclear arsenal,” Scarborough said, referring to a tweet Trump published on Thursday calling for the United States to “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”
“And the president-elect told you what?” Scarborough said to Brzezinski.
“Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass,” she replied. “And outlast them all.”
BREAKING: Trump to #morningjoe on the nukes tweet: 'Let it be an arms race' https://t.co/X9FMNtgKPK
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) December 23, 2016
Trump’s statement directly contradicts the spin spokesman Jason Miller offered Thursday afternoon in an effort to downplay Thursday’s tweet — spin that interpreted Trump’s comments as merely warning about “the threat of nuclear proliferation.”
Miller said (via NBC News):
President-elect Trump was referring to the threat of nuclear proliferation and the critical need to prevent it — particularly to and among terrorist organizations and unstable and rogue regimes. He has also emphasized the need to improve and modernize our deterrent capability as a vital way to pursue peace through strength.
Trump’s comments Friday indicate Miller had it wrong. The president-elect is actually endorsing a nuclear arms race, not warning about the dangers of one, because he’s confident the United States would somehow win.
Trump’s position represents a break from the nonproliferation efforts the United States has led for decades. As ThinkProgress detailed last spring, international nonproliferation agreements reduced the number of operational warheads in the world from a high of 64,452 in 1986 to 10,315 in 2015. The president-elect’s statements suggest that downward trend will come to an end.
Friday is far from the first time Trump said reckless things about nuclear weapons. During an interview last March with Chris Matthews, Trump said he was open to using nukes if the situation called for it and questioned why we’d make them if we never intended to use them. During a Fox News interview the next day, Trump wouldn’t even rule out the possibility of using nukes in Europe.
“Europe is a big place,” Trump said. “I’m not going to take cards off the table. We have nuclear capability.”
During a Fox News Sunday interview in April, Trump said he wasn’t concerned about a nuclear arms race on the Korean peninsula, because “it’s not like, gee whiz, nobody has them.” His comments Friday morning echo that let-the-world-proliferate position.
It’s not even the first time one of the Morning Joe hosts has broken concerning news about Trump and his position on nukes. In August, Scarborough told his audience that “several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump, and three times [Trump] asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times, he asked, at one point, ‘If we have them, we can’t we use them?’… Three times, in an hour briefing, ‘Why can’t we use nuclear weapons?’”
Scarborough shared that story during an interview with former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden. Hayden said it worried him because of how “erratic” Trump is.
“He’s inconsistent,” Hayden added. “And when you’re the head of a global super power, inconsistency, unpredictability, those are dangerous things. They frighten your friends and they tempt your enemies. And so, I would be very concerned.”
In response to a subsequent question about what steps might stand in the way of Trump using nukes if he becomes president, Hayden said, “The system is designed for speed and decisiveness. It’s not designed to debate the decision.”