President Donald Trump claimed this morning on Twitter that his “first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal,” adding the it “is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before….”:
My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 9, 2017
…Hopefully we will never have to use this power, but there will never be a time that we are not the most powerful nation in the world!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 9, 2017
Reporters, however, quickly took issue with the claim:
lol what an insane lie https://t.co/Ge2W4RcHLi
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) August 9, 2017
What?!?!!?! The lead time on new weapons systems is measured in years. And for nuclear ones, sometimes decades. https://t.co/Fw675hBXDM
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) August 9, 2017
"A final report will be presented to Trump 'by the end of the year,'"https://t.co/3MhsopQs2G https://t.co/FbdO8z7zNS
— Jared Rizzi (@JaredRizzi) August 9, 2017
Trump says he's already made nuke arsenal "far stronger and more powerful than ever before."
Making my brain hurt because math. https://t.co/bgcTdTuvKZ
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) August 9, 2017
And they pointed out that his first order was actually on Obamacare which was not modernized. At all:
1. Obama began the modernization process: https://t.co/llR7OCBmzQ
2. Trump's first order was on Obamacare: https://t.co/JW2lSnoDUL https://t.co/4uNXVANn4U
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 9, 2017
This is false. His first executive order was about Obamacare. https://t.co/iG48y8PZvJ https://t.co/LqNWOW8Ham
— Jessica Huseman (@JessicaHuseman) August 9, 2017
Not "first." POTUS ordered Nuclear Posture Review in Executive Memo on Jan. 27, signed at Pentagon. (9th Exec Memo; following 4 ExOrders). https://t.co/T2V9msePi9
— John R Parkinson (@jparkABC) August 9, 2017
But here’s a reminder that despite the rhetoric, we still have a long way to go on achieving the modernization we desire:
Dangerously not true. U.S. still relies on floppy disks from 1980s to coordinate "operational functions" of its nuclear forces https://t.co/qgpigj4Lhy
— West Wing Reports (@WestWingReport) August 9, 2017
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