Former President Donald Trump drew widespread mockery after bizarrely bragging during a Fox News town hall about how he understands nuclear weapons "maybe better than anybody" simply because his uncle, physicist and inventor John Trump, was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Addressing the crowd during the event, which was moderated by Fox News personality Sean Hannity, Trump said:
"The one program I hated to upgrade was the nuclear program and I understand it maybe better than anybody. My uncle was at MIT, a professor, the longest serving professor in the history of MIT."
“Very smart guy. We have a smart family. It’s nice to have a smart family."
"I understood nuclear for a long time, the power of nuclear weapons. You need a president who's not going to be taking you into war. We won't have World War III when I'm elected."
You can hear what he said in the video below.
That's rich coming from someone whose thin skin raised concerns throughout his presidency about how he'd react at the helm during a nuclear scare—and people were quick to mock him for it.
It should go without saying that Trump doesn't understand nuclear power at all.
In 2019, Axios reported that Trump asked why the United States could not just drop a nuclear bomb into the eye of a hurricane to stop it from making landfall.
Trump's question–which he vehemently denied ever asking–prompted a response from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which noted that detonating a nuclear weapon "might not even alter the storm" and the "radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas."
Confidence in his ability to lead the country in the event of a nuclear scare was low enough throughout his presidency that an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that two-thirds of Americans do not believe he should be trusted with the nuclear codes and more than half "are concerned he might launch a nuclear attack without justification."
