Former President Donald Trump told British broadcaster Piers Morgan that were he in charge of the US, he’d tell his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, that he couldn’t say the word “nuclear” ever again. Amid the conflict in Ukraine, Trump has swung between issuing nuclear threats and calling for negotiations.
“Putin uses the ‘N-word’…the nuclear word, all the time,” Trump told Morgan, in a clip from an interview set to air on Monday. “That’s a no-no, you’re not supposed to do that. He uses it on a daily basis. And everybody’s so afraid… And as they’re afraid, he uses it more and more. That’s why he’s doing the kind of things he’s doing right now.”
Putin has not directly threatened the West with nuclear weapons, but in a speech marking the launch of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in February, cautioned that anyone who “tries to stand in our way” will face consequences “such as you have never seen in your entire history.” Before the operation, he told French President Emmanuel Macron that a war between Russia and NATO would be one with “no winners,” presumed by many to be a reference to the destructive power of nuclear arms.
Trump, however, told Morgan that he’d wave America’s own nukes at Putin. “I’d say ‘we have far more than you do, far more powerful than you, and you can’t use that word ever again.”
“You cannot use the nuclear word ever again, and if you do, we’re gonna have problems,” Trump continued, without elaborating.