President Donald Trump reportedly revealed the existence of and bragged about a supposedly secret nuclear weapons system during an interview with Bob Woodward, according to an excerpt published Wednesday from his new book “Rage.”
Trump was speaking to Woodward about how close the U.S. had come to war with North Korea in 2017 when he brought up the nuclear weapons system, according to an excerpt published in The Washington Post.
Re Trump’s new nuclear weapon.
In 2017, the admin announced a plan to reduce the explosive power of some nuclear warheads on submarine-launched missiles. The timing was kept secret. My guess is that Trump told Woodward about the first deployment before it was made public. pic.twitter.com/Q4ZW4HZOUU
— (((James Acton))) (@james_acton32) September 9, 2020
“I have built a nuclear — a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before,” Trump reportedly told Woodward, according to The Washington Post. “We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about.”
“We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before,” Trump reportedly added, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. “There’s nobody — what we have is incredible.” (RELATED: Russia Releases Footage Of Largest-Ever Nuclear Explosion)
Woodward later wrote that he spoke to anonymous sources who confirmed that the U.S. military had a previously undisclosed nuclear weapons system, The Washington Post reported. The sources were reportedly surprised that Trump had disclosed its existence.
James Acton, co-director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s nuclear policy program, suggested in a tweet Wednesday that Trump might have been referring to the Trident D5 ballistic missile. The low-yield and submarine-launched weapons system was first hinted at in the Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, The Hill reported.
I don’t believe that the US could build an actually new nuclear weapon in secret. Too much money for classified budgets. Too many people involved for it not to leak.
— (((James Acton))) (@james_acton32) September 9, 2020
The Pentagon confirmed the existence of the warhead in February amid reports that it was deployed in late 2019, The Hill reported. It is unclear if Trump was referring to this weapons system as Woodward reportedly conducted 18 interviews with Trump between December 2019 and July, according to The New York Times.
Excerpts published by The Washington Post revealed other comments Trump made during his interviews with Woodward, including a recording where he appeared to downplay the threat of the coronavirus. (RELATED: Fauci ‘Didn’t Get Any Sense’ That Trump Downplayed Coronavirus, Says He Would ‘Question’ Woodward Claims)
Trump said his comments about the coronavirus were made in order to avoid a sense of panic and called Woodward’s book “just another political hit job.”