A casual remark made by Donald Trump to Ricardo Rosselló set off alarms in the former governor of Puerto Rico, as recounted in his upcoming memoir.
According to a report by The New Republic’s Hafiz Rashid, Rosselló’s book “The Reformer’s Dilemma,” obtained details an unsettling conversation with Trump while they were surveying the island after Hurricane Maria in 2017.
During their helicopter tour, Trump reportedly commented, “Nature has a way of coming back,” and then added, “Well, it does until it does not. Who knows with nuclear warfare what will happen…”
Rosselló writes, “And then, he said the one thing that made me more concerned than anything else in the entire visit. ‘But I tell you what …’ He paused for effect. ‘If a nuclear war happens, we won’t be second in line pressing the button.’”
“This statement floored me. I could not believe what I was hearing. It was surreal. Was he really talking about total annihilation as we flew over the ravaged sights of the island?” Rosselló added.
The New Republic report elaborates that Trump’s history of alarming comments about nuclear weapons makes this story unsurprising. During his 2016 campaign, he reportedly asked a foreign policy adviser, “Why have them if we can’t use them?” In December 2016, he declared, “Let it be an arms race … we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
In the summer of 2017, Trump told military leaders he wanted to increase the nuclear stockpile tenfold, back to Cold War peak levels and even discussed using nukes against North Korea. Notably, he also suggested the idea of nuking hurricanes to prevent them from hitting the United States.
Rosselló’s memoir sheds light on the unnerving experience of discussing nuclear warfare with Trump amidst the devastation of Hurricane Maria, adding another layer to the controversial former president’s legacy.