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Trump reportedly suggested averting hurricanes via nuclear weapons

Hundreds of thousands of water bottles meant for victims of Hurricane Maria are seen sitting in a vacant lot in Dorado, 40 kilometers west of San Juan, on July 28, 2019. (AFP photo)

US President Donald Trump reportedly suggested using nuclear weapons against hurricanes to prevent them from hitting the United States.

"I got it. I got it. Why don't we nuke them?" Trump said a White House briefing with Homeland Security and national security officials, Axios reported Sunday, citing an anonymous source.

"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?" the source added.

The briefer reportedly reacted by saying, "Sir, we'll look into that."

The briefer "was knocked back on his heels," the source in the room added. "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?'"

This is while scientists and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have asserted that idea would not work.

"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. Needless to say, this is not a good idea," according to Tropical Cyclone Myths Page an online fact sheet by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The US president brought up the issue a second time with a senior administration official. Their conversation is described in a 2017 National Security Council memo.

The source added that this NSC memo captured "multiple topics, not just hurricanes. … It wasn't that somebody was so terrified of the bombing idea that they wrote it down. They just captured the president’s comments."

A senior administration official has responded to the report by refusing to take any stance.

"We don't comment on private discussions that the president may or may not have had with his national security team."

Another senior administration official, briefed on the matter, defended Trump's idea.

"His goal — to keep a catastrophic hurricane from hitting the mainland — is not bad," the official said. "His objective is not bad," said the official. "What people near the president do is they say 'I love a president who asks questions like that, who’s willing to ask tough questions.' ... It takes strong people to respond to him in the right way when stuff like this comes up. 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."


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