Trump Claims To Have Built A New, Secret Nuclear Weapons System

Topline

President Donald Trump claimed to journalist Bob Woodward that he had overseen the creation of a new U.S. nuclear weapons system, saying, “We have stuff that you haven’t ever seen or heard about,”as the two discussed tensions between the United States and North Korea.

U.S. President Donald Trump shushes journalists before signing the Paycheck Protection Program ... [+] Flexibility Act in the Rose Garden at the White House June 05, 2020 in Washington, DC. In the midst of nationwide protests against the death of George Floyd, the U.S. Labor Department announced the unemployment rate fell to 13.3 percent in May, a surprising improvement in the nation’s job market as hiring rebounded faster than economists expected in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

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Key Facts

It’s not clear what Trump was referring to, but Woodward writes in his new book Rage that he later confirmed with sources that the U.S. military indeed had a secret new weapon system, and the sources said they were surprised Trump had disclosed the information, according to The Washington Post.

It’s possible that Trump was referring to the W76-2 warhead, according to the defense publication Task & Purpose.

That weapon was announced in Feb. 2018 as a relatively “low-cost” addition to the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and has a smaller explosive yield than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Trump made the comments to Woodward during one of 18 on-the-record interviews the famed Watergate journalist had with the president between December and July for his for his upcoming book, which is billed as providing an inside look at the Trump White House.

Critical Quote

“I have built a nuclear — a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before. There’s nobody — what we have is incredible,” Trump said.

Key Background

Trump reportedly made the comments when reflecting on how close the U.S. came to war with North Korea in 2017, near the beginning of his presidency. Tensions have decreased some through the remainder of his term, and Trump has met multiple times with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

Tangent

Trump also told Woodward on Feb. 7 that coronavirus “is even more strenuous than deadly flus,” and warned that it “goes through the air,” seeming to privately contradict his public comments downplaying the virus. In a June 19 interview, Trump also seemed to dismiss Woodward’s assertion that the two might not understand the “anger and pain” Black Americans were feeling after the death of George Floyd due to their privileged upbringings. “You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you?” Trump told Woodward.

Big Number

100 seconds. That’s how close the Doomsday Clock is to midnight—the closest in the 73-year history of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ measure of risk, which was developed to provide an easy to understand metric for the public of the level of danger of catastrophe from nuclear weapons, but was recently revised to take climate change into account.

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