Hillary Clinton took to Twitter Monday to react to reports President Trump suggested nuking hurricanes in order to drive them away from the U.S. coast – a report the president has called “ridiculous” and “FAKE NEWS.”
“We should not nuke hurricanes,” the failed presidential candidate wrote on Twitter:
Axios claimed in a piece published Sunday that Trump floated nuking hurricanes to Homeland Security and national security officials as a potential solution to drive hurricanes away from the U.S. coast.
According to Axios:
During one hurricane briefing at the White House, Trump said, “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?” the source added, paraphrasing the president’s remarks.
…Trump also raised the idea in another conversation with a senior administration official. A 2017 NSC memo describes that second conversation, in which Trump asked whether the administration should bomb hurricanes to stop them from hitting the homeland. A source briefed on the NSC memo said it does not contain the word “nuclear”; it just says the president talked about bombing hurricanes.
Axios quoted a senior administration official, who did not confirm or deny if the conversations took place: “We don’t comment on private discussions that the president may or may not have had with his national security team.”
However, Trump forcefully pushed back against the Axios report in a tweet Monday, calling it, “ridiculous” and “FAKE NEWS”:
“The story by Axios that President Trump wanted to blow up large hurricanes with nuclear weapons prior to reaching shore is ridiculous,” he wrote. “I never said this. Just more FAKE NEWS!”: