President Donald Trump discussed his worry about nuclear weapons on Sunday, saying that “monster” nukes could be the biggest threat to humanity, with the potential to “end the world.”
Trump shared his fears while appearing on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” noting that he is pushing to restart arms control talks with Russia and China.
“The greatest [threat] is sitting on shelves in various countries called ‘nuclear weapons’ that are big monsters that can blow your heads off for miles and miles and miles,” Trump said.
He also shared that money plays a major role in nuclear stockpiles, as he went on to discuss the amount of money the U.S. has spent on its nuclear arsenal.
“We spend a lot of money of nuclear weapons — the level of destruction is beyond anything you can imagine,” he said in the wide-ranging interview. “It’s just bad that you have to spend all this money on something, that if it’s used, it’s probably the end of the world.”
Trump also discussed his efforts to bring other countries pursuing nuclear weapons to the table, sharing that he recently wrote Iran’s supreme leader a letter, hoping to strike a new nuclear deal.
“I’ve written them a letter saying, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing,’” Trump said.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appeared to shut the door on talks on Saturday, sharing in a statement that he wasn’t looking for more demands from the U.S.
“Some coercive governments insist on negotiations. Such negotiations aren’t aimed at solving issues. Their aim is to exert their dominance and impose what they want,” Khamenei said in the statement. “For coercive governments, negotiations are a means to impose new demands. Iran will definitely not fulfill these new demands.”
During the interview, Trump also discussed climate change, saying people are focused on the wrong danger and threat to humanity.
“I watched Biden for years say the existential threat is from the climate,” Trump said. “I said ‘no’.”
“They talk about the climate, and they talk about the dangers of the climate, but they don’t talk about the dangers of a nuclear weapon, which could happen tomorrow.”
Last month, Trump discussed the country’s nuclear stockpile, which is the second largest in the world behind Russia and ahead of China, which is third. However, the president doesn’t appear to want to be in first for this race, saying that he hopes defense budgets for all three countries could be cut in half and nukes could become less of a priority.
“There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons. We already have so many,” Trump said last month. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”