Thursday on CNN’s “The Lead,” former Obama administration U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul called President Donald Trump “confused” during a discussion about Trump instructing the Department of War to start testing nuclear weapons.
Host Jake Tapper said, “What’s so confusing about this announcement by President Trump is Russia and China are not testing nuclear weapons.”
McFaul said, “Let’s be clear, it’s a really, really bad idea. We don’t need to do it. That’s why we haven’t done it since 1992. And if we begin to test our nuclear warheads, that will encourage China to do it. And we are way ahead. In testing. They’ve already done it. You know, I think around 50 tests we’ve done thousands. We don’t want them to close that gap. So I think it’s a really bad idea. And it would have to be done underground. You know which state wants to do that?”
He added, “But the second thing is, I do think the president is probably confused. It’s one thing to explode nuclear warheads. It’s another thing to test their delivery systems. And I think he might be confused. He saw that Putin threatened to test a couple of their new delivery systems and so maybe that’s what he was referring to. I hope it dies away because it’s a bad idea. It’s not in America’s national interest.”
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