Trump Suggests Using Nuclear Weapons To Stop Hurricanes From Hitting The U.S.

Trump suggests to Homeland Security that we “drop a bomb” to disrupt hurricanes

In another chapter of “He didn’t really say that, right?” it seems, in fact, he did. According to comments recorded at a White House briefing, President Trump suggested on multiple occasions that U.S. Homeland Security and national security officials explore using nuclear weapons to disrupt hurricanes, preventing them from making landfall.

A National Security Council memorandum recorded his comments, including Trump saying, “I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?” according to one source who was there. “They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they’re moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can’t we do that?”Axios reported.

When asked how the source responded to Trump’s suggestions, it was something like, “Sir, we’ll look into that.” Bless.

Obviously, his latest remarks were a lay-up in terms of comedic responses on social media:

During the discussion, Trump also asked how many hurricanes the U.S. could handle and asked again for officials to look into a nuclear intervention. According to the source, the briefer “was knocked back on his heels. You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting. People were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, ‘What the f—? What do we do with this?'”

The president denied saying anything about nuking hurricanes while referring to himself in the third person, saying in part, “I never said this. Just more FAKE NEWS!”

Trump, surprisingly, isn’t the first to offer nukes as a suggestion to disrupting hurricanes. It’s been specifically addressed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fact sheet, saying in part, “Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems,” the sheet reads. “Needless to say, this is not a good idea.”

Axios also reports that this latest suggestion wasn’t the first time the president mentioned this idea. A memo from the National Security Council said that Trump asked about bombing hurricanes to keep them off U.S. shores back in 2017.

A senior administration official has come to Trump’s defense, saying, “His goal — to keep a catastrophic hurricane from hitting the mainland — is not bad. His objective is not bad… For me, alarm bells weren’t going off when I heard about it, but I did think somebody is going to use this to feed into ‘the president is crazy’ narrative.” Fine, but if someone suggested we prevent forest fires from spreading by getting a bunch of wildlife to blow in the fire’s general direction to change wind patterns, we’d probably question their mental state too, yes?

Perhaps it’s best to leave issues like climate change, the military, weather, and science to the actual experts.