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Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump lamented the
hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in rebuilding the
nation's nuclear deterrent and said he hopes to gain commitments
from the U.S. adversaries to cut their own spending.
“There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear
weapons, we already have so many,” Trump said. “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.”
“We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on
other things that are actually, hopefully much more productive,"
Trump said.
While the U.S. and Russia hold massive stockpiles of weapons
since the Cold War, Trump predicted that China would catch up in
their capability to exact nuclear devastation “within five or
six years.”
He said if the weapons were ever called to use, “that’s going to
be probably oblivion.”
Trump said he would look to engage in nuclear talks with the two
countries once “we straighten it all out" in the Middle East and
Ukraine.
“One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi
of China, President Putin of Russia. And I want to say, ‘let’s
cut our military budget in half.’ And we can do that. And I
think we’ll be able to.”
Trump in his first term tried and failed to bring China into
nuclear arms reduction talks when the U.S. and Russia were
negotiating an extension of a pact known as New START.
Russia suspended its participation in the treaty during the
Biden administration, as the U.S. and Russia continued on
massive programs to extend the life-spans or replace their Cold
War-era nuclear arsenals.
China has rebuffed past American efforts to draw it into nuclear
arms talks, saying the U.S. and Russia first need to reduce
their much larger arsenals. A government official reiterated
that position on Friday.
“The U.S. and Russia should ... significantly and substantially
reduce their nuclear arsenals and create the necessary
conditions for other nuclear-armed states to join the nuclear
disarmament process,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun
said at a daily briefing in Beijing.
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Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed.
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