Donald Trump continues to push the bounds of what is and isn’t politically acceptable during a presidential campaign.
Today, after Trump suffered a string of major flubs (like calling out a baby for crying at a rally), MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough revealed an anecdote about an unnamed foreign policy expert who went to advise the Republican presidential candidate. Thrice, Trump asked the expert about nuclear weapons, going so far as to ask, “If we had them, why can’t we use them?” according to Scarborough on his “Morning Joe” program.
Following Scarborough’s report, conservative analyst and Jeb Bush’s national security adviser John Noonan took to Twitter to criticize Trump’s insistence on a “First Use”—using nuclear weapons even when unprovoked—nuclear policy. According to Noonan, since the Cold War, the possession of nuclear weapons has been used as a peace tactic. Essentially, we won’t use ours, you don’t use yours, but we have them, just in case you decide to. Noonan, a former Air Force Global Strike Command launch officer (aka, the dudes who would launch a nuclear strike if ordered to), didn’t mince words in criticizing Trump’s propensity to fire ’em off without a second thought.
Noonan goes on to theorize that Trump’s public statements about his propensity to use nuclear weapons will galvanize Russia, China and “others” to respond. “Nuclear deterrence is about balance,” he went on to say. “Trump is an elephant jumping up and down on one side of the scale. So damn dangerous.”
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To see the rest of Noonan’s tweet storm, you can check out his Twitter here.
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