“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”
Oct 10, 2024
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks on the phone from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Nov. 22, 2018. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
LLAW’s NUCLEAR VIEWS, ISSUES & COMMENTS, Thursday, (10/10/2024)
With just a short four weeks until election day, you owe it to yourself to read this excerpt and analysis from Bob Woodward’s new book “War”. I believe if Trump is re-elected President of the United States of America, he will immediately put Ukraine, the United States, and NATO in an extremely serious precarious political and military situation with Russia. ~llaw
What a New Book’s Explosive Revelations Tell Us About Biden, Trump, and Putin
Bob Woodward’s “War” suggests Biden may have stopped a nuclear war even as Trump was secretly talking to Russia’s president.
Michael Hirsh
By Michael Hirsh, a columnist for Foreign Policy.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks on the phone from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Nov. 22, 2018. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
October 9, 2024, 3:14 PM View Comments (6)
It is a study in contrasts—and of just how dysfunctional the U.S. political system has become, even in the conduct of foreign policy. Over the last several years, around the same period of time U.S. President Joe Biden was confronting Russian President Vladimir Putin, his predecessor Donald Trump was secretly talking to him and opposing U.S. military aid to Ukraine, according to Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward in his new book, War.
Russia’s War in Ukraine
Understanding the conflict two years on.
Among the shocking new disclosures in the book, a copy of which was obtained by Foreign Policy ahead of its release date next week, Woodward reports that Trump spoke to Putin as many as seven times after he left the presidency and that at one point, in 2024, Trump told a senior aide to leave the room at his mansion in Mar-a-Lago so “he could have what he said was a private phone call” with the Russian leader.
It was not clear how many of the other calls to Putin occurred before or after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. But the disclosures raise new questions about whether the former president might have violated the Logan Act, which forbids a U.S. citizen from communicating “without authority” from the federal government with foreign officials to “influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government” in a dispute with the United States. Such questions date back to suggestions that incoming Trump officials had contacts with Russia even before he was inaugurated in January 2017.
With the U.S. presidential election less than a month away, the book resurrects unsettling questions about Trump’s relationship to Putin and the largely unresolved mystery of the former president’s business and financial ties to Russia.
In particular, the Woodward disclosures raise fresh questions about Trump’s well-documented deference to Putin, especially since Trump has promised to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war “in 24 hours” if elected, hinting broadly that he would do so by forcing Ukraine to cede territory to Russia and forswear joining NATO, which is partly what Putin demands. Going back to just days before the invasion, as Russian troops were amassing on the Ukrainian border, the former president went out of his way to praise Putin for his aggression. “I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine … as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful,” Trump told a right-wing radio program on Feb. 22, 2022. He also suggested that Putin’s effort to subsume Ukraine could be a model for how the United States should deal with its immigration problem. “We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen,” Trump said.
The book cover for War by Bob Woodward
War, Bob Woodward, Simon & Schuster, 448 pp., $32, October 2024
As Woodward writes, “Trump’s unwillingness to criticize Putin was not a one-off incident but a consistent character trait.” Woodward describes his source on Trump’s post-presidential phone calls to Putin as a single anonymous Trump aide, but when he asked Jason Miller, the former president’s top 2024 campaign aide, about the calls, Miller did not outright deny Woodward’s account but said, “I’d push back on that.” Asked further whether Trump could resolve the Ukraine war with one phone call, as the former president has occasionally claimed, Miller said:
“I think he could. He knows the pressure points. He knows what is going to motivate both sides, and I think he can do that with one phone call each,” meaning to Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, respectively.
Woodward also quotes Dan Coats, Trump’s former director of national intelligence, as saying he himself has long been mystified by Trump’s relationship with Putin. “His reaching out and never saying anything bad about Putin. For me … it’s scary,” Coats told Woodward.
Asked to comment on Woodward’s reporting, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung responded with a lengthy personal broadside against the journalist. “None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Cheung said in a statement, adding that Trump is already “successfully” suing Woodward “because of the unauthorized publishing of recordings he made previously.” Cheung added: “Woodward is a total sleazebag who has lost it mentally, and he’s slow, lethargic, incompetent, and overall a boring person with no personality.”
Cheung did not mention that Trump has agreed to numerous interviews with Woodward, who is regarded as Washington’s leading chronicler of presidents, going back to 1989.
Woodward also supplies some harrowing new details on Biden’s “missiles of October” moment in 2022, parts of which have been previously reported. In the fall of that year, six months into Putin’s faltering invasion of Ukraine and in the face of a Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Biden administration began receiving alarming intelligence that the Russian president was increasingly desperate over his battlefield losses. New intelligence reports indicated that there was a 50 percent chance Russia would use a tactical nuclear weapon, an assessment that was dramatically up from 5 percent and then 10 percent earlier in the war, Woodward writes.
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TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS, Thursday, (10/10/2024)
All Things Nuclear
NEWS
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Nuclear Power
NEWS
Big tech is bringing nuclear power back to life – The Economist
The Economist
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Which… – U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy | Facebook – Facebook
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The World Economic Forum
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Exclusive: Italy eyes Westinghouse, EDF as partners for nuclear power firm, sources say
Reuters
The Italian government plans to draft by the end of this year rules to allow the use of new nuclear power technologies, the energy minister said on …
Nuclear Power Emergencies
NEWS
Nuclear incident response drills being held on-campus at McMaster – YouTube
YouTube
… nuclear reactor. The university says that emergency response vehicles and personnel will be on campus starting at 7 a.m. ahead of when the …
Risk communication and public response to potential radiation emergencies in New York City – Gupta
Wiley Online Library
For example, studies routinely show that members of the public rate the risk of radiation from nuclear power plants as significantly higher (and …
Labor announces surprise parliamentary inquiry into nuclear power, raising hopes of an … – ABC
ABC
The government has surprised the Coalition by announcing an inquiry into the deployment of nuclear power, including small modular reactors, …
Nuclear War
NEWS
Iran Nuclear Bomb Test Fear: Biden Ends 2-Month Fight With Netanyahu – YouTube
YouTube
Iran Nuclear Bomb Test Fear: Biden Ends 2-Month Fight With Netanyahu; US Bid To Stop Israeli Attack? · Comments104.
What a New Book’s Explosive Revelations Tell Us About Biden, Trump, and Putin
Foreign Policy
Bob Woodward’s “War” suggests Biden may have stopped a nuclear war even as Trump was secretly talking to Russia’s president.
Russia says ‘Nuclear Five’ states to meet soon in New York | Reuters
Reuters
A group of five nuclear weapons states will hold a meeting in New York in the next two weeks, Russian state media quoted Deputy Foreign Minister …
Nuclear War Threats
NEWS
Opinion | At the Brink: Confronting the Risk of Nuclear War – The New York Times
The New York Times
A new series from Times Opinion about the threat of nuclear weapons in an unstable world.
SPIA exhibit and programming this week are directing attention to nuclear weapons as a …
Princeton University
A convening of scientists and an Oct. 11 performance also address nuclear threats. … Bruce G. Blair, acclaimed expert on the risks of nuclear war, …
NATO will start an annual nuclear exercise as Russia threatens Ukraine’s Western backers
The Hindu
… nuclear talks amid war tensions, Russian President Vladimir Putin threats … threat of nuclear weapons being used. Mr. Rutte said it’s important .
Yellowstone Caldera
NEWS
Scientists uncover details of a catastrophic volcanic eruption and flood over 1,000 years ago
Phys.org
Their work suggests that at least 1 cubic kilometer of water spilled from the volcano’s caldera … More magma found below Yellowstone Caldera than …
Iwatesan (Japan) Volcano () – Smithsonian / USGS Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for 2 October …
Volcano Discovery
Yellowstone quakes · Latest earthquakes under Yellowstone volcano. List and interactive map of current and past earthquakes near Yellowstone volcano.