It is not every day you hear that a president dreamed about nukes like they were fireworks. But according to Miles Taylor, that is exactly what happened inside Donald Trump’s White House.
Taylor, who worked in Homeland Security, says Trump “fantasized” about nuclear bombs and even wanted to see them explode. Not in a movie, but for real.
He told Newsweek that Trump once said “he badly wanted to strike North Korea with a nuclear weapon.” It was not strategy, Taylor explained. “He wanted to see bombs blown up. That was alarming to people.”
Inside the administration, the talk sent chills. “In the national security world, anything having to do with nuclear weapons is handled with extreme sensitivity—well planned, carefully scripted—yet we didn’t know what Trump might say at any given moment. The team was freaked,” Taylor said.
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He remembered how Trump’s famous threat to Kim Jong Un in 2017 — the one promising “fire, fury, and, frankly, power, the likes of which this world has never seen before” — was not just for the cameras. “That’s when we knew he almost seemed to welcome a nuclear conflict, which terrified us,” Taylor said.
The tension got so bad that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reportedly stopped Taylor after a meeting and warned, “You all need to prepare like we’re going to war.”
That was not a figure of speech. Taylor says officials held emergency meetings about what would happen if the U.S. were hit by a nuclear strike. “Experts walked through various scenarios of a nuclear strike on the U.S. homeland, dusted off response plans, and outlined best-case scenarios which sounded horrifically grim,” he said. “I walked out of those meetings genuinely worried about the safety of the country.”
The White House did not stay quiet. Spokesperson Abigail Jackson called Taylor “a hack who weaponized and abused his government position to prioritize his own ambition, personal notoriety, and monetary gain.” She added, “He betrayed the American people by disclosing sensitive information through unauthorized methods and he is wholly unqualified to speak about anything related to the President or his Administration.”
Taylor was not moved. He said Trump told people like John Kelly that he “badly wanted to strike North Korea with a nuclear weapon.” He added that Trump “wasn’t coyly playing the role of ‘madman’ in order to call North Korea’s bluff. He was actually prepared to take America into a deadly apocalyptic conflict.”
Then came the plot twist. Days after Taylor’s comments, Trump proudly announced that the U.S. would start nuclear testing again after thirty years. “The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country,” he wrote. “Because of the tremendous destructive power, I HATED to do it, but had no choice!”
Speaking later, Trump said, “We don’t do testing. We’ve halted it years many years ago, but with others doing testing, I think it’s appropriate that we do also.”
Watch the full clip here.
Featured image via YouTube screengrab
