United States President, Donald Trump has warned that “monster” nuclear weapons are the biggest threat to humanity and could easily “end the world” tomorrow.
The US commander-in-chief gave the grim warning as he lamented the dangers of stockpiling nukes amid his push to kickstart arms control talks with Russia and China again.
“The greatest [threat] is sitting on shelves in various countries called ‘nuclear weapons’ that are big monsters that can blow your heads off for miles and miles and miles,” Trump told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”\
Trump went on to lament the amount of money the United States, which has the second-largest stockpile of nukes in the world behind Russia, has spent on its nuclear weapon program.
“We spend a lot of money on nuclear weapons — the level of destruction is beyond anything you can imagine,” he said in the wide-ranging interview.
“It’s just bad that you have to spend all this money on something that if it’s used, it’s probably the end of the world.”
Trump also pushed back against the world leaders who have spent years claiming climate change is posing the biggest threat to humanity.
“I watched [former President Joe] Biden for years say the existential threat is from the climate,” Trump said. “I said ‘No.'”
“They talk about the climate and they talk about the dangers of the climate but they don’t talk about the dangers of a nuclear weapon, which could happen tomorrow.”
His statement comes after he recently warned that Russia has by far the most nukes in the world but predicted that China, which has the third-largest stockpile, will likely catch up within a decade.
Trump stressed too that he wants to restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China and that he eventually hopes the two countries, as well as the US, could agree to cut their massive defense budgets in half. He added that he would look to engage in nuclear talks with the two countries once “we straighten it all out” in the Middle East and Ukraine.
“There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many,” Trump said last month. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”
