Why Can't Man-Baby Donald Trump Use Nuclear Weapons, WHY WHY WHY??? A Wonksplainer

He wishes.

Former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden had a cup of joe with the "Morning Joe" kids Wednesday, and during his appearance, Joe Scarborough told a tale of Donald Trump meeting with a foreign policy expert and throwing a temper tantrum over why he doesn't get to use nukes if he becomes president. "WHY WHY WHY?" asked Trump, while he pooped his diamond-encrusted underpants and had an absolute meltdown. OK maybe that is not exactly what went down.

Here is Scarborough's quote:

Watch: What are some major concerns about Trump's handling of national security? Hayden and #morningjoe weigh in. https: //t.co/FyFoSmJlJI 

— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) August 3, 2016 

Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump. And three times [Trump] asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked at one point if we had them why can't we use them. ... He just doesn't have foreign policy experts around him.

Holy shitfuck, y'all. Soooo ... if Trump was president, and he just really wanted to use all those American nukes, how quickly could he do that? That's what Scarborough asked Hayden:

It's scenario dependent, but the system is designed for speed and decisiveness. It's not designed to debate the decision.

WORLD GO BOOM LOL THANKS DONALD TRUMP!

[wonkbar]<a href="https: //wonkette.substack.com/p/baby-screams-at-trump-rally-also-there-was-a-baby"></a>[/wonkbar]So, the short answer to Trump's question is actually that he COULD use them if he wants to murder millions of innocent civilians and bring about the apocalypse. If that's what the crying baby wants -- not the crying baby at that Trump rally Tuesday, the crying baby named Trump -- then the crying baby could do that by putting his delicate child fingers on the big red button.

But the actual answer to why a sane American leader of any political party should know better than to use nukes is a bit more complicated.

[wonkbar]<a href="https: //wonkette.substack.com/p/obama-gives-thoughtful-reflective-speech-in-hiroshima-wingnuts-be-damned"></a>[/wonkbar]Let's start with that time America DID use them, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That may have effectively ended the war against the Japanese in World War II, but it was also the beginning of the Cold War, around the same time Donald Trump was born. At the time, Americans were pretty excited about their fancy new people-killin' bombs, but it only took a couple years before global opinion coalesced around the idea that those bombs were fuckin' bad, y'all . For an explanation of HOW BAD, please revisit President Obama's historic speech in Hiroshima, where he explained that those bombs are fuckin' bad, y'all. 

As the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union began, the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (the idea that if you nuke the fuck out of us, we have the resources to nuke the fuck out of you right back and EVERYONE WILL DIE) started to form. It deterred nations from striking first with nuclear weapons, and even though the Cold War is over and the Soviet Union is technically no more (sorta kinda, as many would agree Vladimir Putin has always had designs on officially getting the band back together) the doctrine still actually exists, though most people don't fear The Bomb the way they did in, say, the 1980s.

Speaking of the 1980s, here's what Saint Ronnie Reagan of the Grand Old Party had to say about nukes:

The original cold warrior himself, Ronald Reagan, [...] considered nuclear weapons to be “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.”

Reagan dreamed of a world with NO NUKES, and Donald Trump was alive when he was president! That's when Trump was married to Ivana and they banged at least three times, producing Ivanka, Eric and Donald, Jr. Was Daddy Trump even paying attention, or was he too busy building his fake empire?

[wonkbar]<a href="https: //wonkette.substack.com/p/remember-how-donald-trump-is-a-war-hero-too-except-the-opposite-of-that"></a>[/wonkbar]Reagan's dream of eliminating nukes is shared by gajillions of nations. Did you know we have a thing called the Treaty On The Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)? It took effect in 1970, just a couple years after Donald Trump effectively pussed out of serving in the Vietnam War. Here are the nuts and bolts of that treaty:

The NPT is a multilateral treaty aimed at limiting the spread of nuclear weapons including three elements: (1) non-proliferation, (2) disarmament, and (3) peaceful use of nuclear energy. [...]

1. States without nuclear weapons will not acquire them;

2. States with nuclear weapons will pursue disarmament;

3. All states can access nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, under safeguards.

Shooting nuclear weapons at people we don't like may not be BANNED by that treaty, but it surely doesn't seem to be in keeping with its spirit, does it?

Now, if Trump goes a little Ask Jeeves-ing, he might find that the United States does not actually have an officialpolicy of "No First Use," but that it's  de facto  U.S. policy nonetheless. Trump may not understand terms like de facto or "seventy fucking years of established foreign policy," so we guess he could pick out a country with a funny name ("Djibouti! Sounds like Your Bootie!") and nuke it.

HOWEVER, America's most recent Nuclear Posture Review, conducted by the Obama administration in 2010, should serve to piss on Trump's Corn Flakes:

[T]he US is ruling out a nuclear response to attacks on America involving biological, chemical or conventional weapons.

But this comes with a big caveat: countries will only be spared a US nuclear response if they comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - this does not include Iran and North Korea. [...]

The document said America would only use nuclear arms in "extreme circumstances", and committed it to not developing any new nuclear warheads.

Oh. Well that's no fun!

But the thing is, that whole Mutually Assured Destruction thingie is still with us, albeit in a different way. Consider:  

Two decades after the Cold War ended, there are still more than 17,000 nuclear warheads around the world, the majority still pointing back and forth between the US and Russia. [...]

"In the Cold War there was a small risk of utter nuclear catastrophe," says Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University.

Today the risk is not so much armageddon but a "slippery slope" of proliferation, he says.

[wonkbar]<a href="https: //wonkette.substack.com/p/sen-tom-cottons-iran-mash-note-not-working-out-that-well-for-him-actually"></a>[/wonkbar]North Korea is trying to get nukes, Iran wants them (remember that Iran nuclear deal Sen. Tom Cotton hates so much? ), and India and Pakistan have been pointing the damn things at each other for decades. Oh, and Israel is FULL of the motherfuckers, like every man, woman and child in Israel gets his or her own pet nuke, and they have to promise to take REALLY good care of it. (That last sentence may not be entirely accurate, but Israel has a shitload of nuclear weapons.)

The obvious point is that if Trump used the big dick of the U.S. nuclear arsenal as a substitute for his own wimpy wiggly weenie and started nuking shit, it would get BAD really fast.

And then there's the practical stuff, also too. Trump wants to "bomb the shit out of ISIS," even though ISIS isn't an actual country. But some of our allies are actual countries that are really nearby! Our best pals the Saudis and the Israelis probably wouldn't want to deal with nuclear fallout from Trump's bomb, we don't think.

And besides, the United States doesn't do massive civilian casualties. OK, stop laughing, yes we do, but we do the kinds that are easier to ignore and shove under the rug, NOT the kind that starts Arma-fucking-geddon.

MORAL OF STORY: Sorry, Donald. Even if you get to be president (LOL) you should under no circumstances use our nuclear weapons arsenal. Nope. For real. Don't touch that button, DON'T FUCKING TOUCH IT, WHAT DID WE JUST TELL YOU ABOUT TOUCHING THAT BUTTON, OH MY GOD!

[ Morning Joe on Twitter ]