Emmanuel Macron has declared that France is prepared to extend its nuclear umbrella to other European nations—a striking proposition at a time when the continent is on edge over security concerns. But across the Atlantic, Donald Trump has a different vision.
“Well, France is also willing to put soldiers into Ukraine for safety reasons,” Trump said Thursday in the Oval Office, brushing off Macron’s announcement while pivoting to his own foreign policy objectives.
It would be great if we could all denuclearize, because the power of nuclear weapons is crazy.
President Donald Trump
The president insists that he had made “a lot of progress” with Ukraine and Russia in recent days, hinting at a potential breakthrough in peace talks. “It’d be great to bring that to an end so we don’t have to talk that way,” he said, taking a veiled swipe at Macron’s proposal. His own view? That the world would be better off if all nuclear weapons disappeared.
“It would be great if we could all denuclearize because the power of nuclear weapons is crazy,” Trump said.
Trump claims that before leaving office, he had been “very far along” in securing a denuclearization agreement with Russia, a detail he had previously kept under wraps. “Despite the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax—which didn’t make it easy, it was a total hoax, total rigged hoax by some bad people—but despite that, I was very close to having a program with Russia, denuclearization, and we were going to get China,” he said.
According to Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping was open to the idea. “Very happy to have gone along with it,” he assured.
But the negotiations, Trump says, were derailed by the 2020 election. “Bad things happened, like an election—it was rigged,” he said, repeating a claim that has been widely debunked.
Now, back in the White House, Trump wants to pick up where he left off. “We had to come back four years later” to restart the push for nuclear disarmament, he said. “I would very much like to start those talks. The denuclearization would be incredible!”
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