Trump reportedly suggested 'Sharknado-style' plot to nuke hurricanes to stop them hitting the US
President Trump repeatedly asked Homeland Security and national security officials if hurricanes could be "nuked" to prevent them from making landfall in the US.
Sources who made the claims to Axios were reportedly either in the same room with him or had been briefed on National Security Council (NSC) memorandums that included the president's words. One of the sources was reportedly attending an unspecified hurricane briefing with Trump at the White House when the POTUS responded saying, "I got it. I got it. Why don't we nuke them?"
According to the source, Trump had suggested dropping a bomb "inside the eye of the hurricane" to disrupt its flow as it moved towards US shores via the Atlantic Ocean. The person who was briefing Trump on the hurricane situation, according to the source, reportedly told him "we'll look into that."
The president then allegedly asked how many hurricanes the United States would be able to withstand and again reiterated his idea about stopping them before they hit the land. According to the source, the person doing the briefing was shocked.
"You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting," the source told Axios. "People were astonished. After the meeting, we thought, 'What the f**k? What do we do with this'?" While it is unclear when the particular exchange took place, Trump was reportedly all for the hurricane bomb before John Bolton became his National Security Adviser in April 2018.
In an NSC memo that logged a discussion between Trump and a senior administration official in 2017, the president reportedly asked if it was possible to deploy bombs on hurricanes to bring them to a halt. Not surprisingly, the bizarre idea never made it to a formal policy process.
While the White House has chosen not to comment on the alleged discussions, a second administration official backed Trump saying his goal of keeping "a catastrophic hurricane from hitting the mainland" was not a bad thing.
Also, it is unclear what inspired the president to put forth the idea - of using bombs against hurricanes. However, the government's own National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration created a whole FAQ about it under the 'Tropical Cyclones Myths' category after it became a popular theory online. According to the NOAA, dropping a nuclear bomb on a hurricane is "not a good idea."
Firstly, it "might not even alter the storm", but more than that, "the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems."
On August 26, Trump reportedly termed the report that he proposed the nuking of hurricanes as "ridiculous." Trump tweeted, referring himself in third person, “The story by Axios that President Trump wanted to blow up large hurricanes with nuclear weapons prior to reaching shore is ridiculous." “I never said this. Just more FAKE NEWS,” he said.
A politico.com report quoted a senior administration official as saying: "We don't comment on private discussions that the president may or may not have had with his national security team."