Jan. 1-Jan. 6: The Nuclear Button
This week, between threats of nuclear war, one thing became stunningly clear: the button that could trigger one isn’t the one on Trump’s desk, but one on his phone.
Welcome to the Zeitgeist Chronicle. Every weekend we catch you up on the past week’s most noteworthy current events. Sometimes it’ll be what everybody’s talking about, other times it may be something we’d like to bring attention to. Our goal is keep you informed enough to be able to have a conversation about any of these current events. This week:
The Tweet
The Background
Less than 48 hours into 2018, the President of the United States sent out a tweet that some are now calling “the most irresponsible tweet in history.” The tweet is not only irresponsible, but un-presidential, stunningly childish, and extremely dangerous.
Trump’s tweet was a response to Kim Jong Un’s New Year’s address, in which the North Korean leader touted the continued growth of his regime’s intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear program, then subtly dared/goaded Trump:
In no way would the United States dare to ignite a war against me and our country. The whole of its mainland is within the range of our nuclear strike and the nuclear button is on my office desk all the time; the United States needs to be clearly aware that this is not merely a threat but a reality.
Trump, as one would expect, fell for it, sending out the above tweet as a response, continuing a public back-and-forth that began this past summer.
This “my nuclear button is bigger than yours” fight is pretty much a high-school level metaphorical dick-measuring contest with an added hint of Russian roulette, played out between the leaders of two nations, with the “grand prize” being a global thermonuclear war party and Dr. Strangelove-esque mutually-assured destruction.
We got some comedic relief, though, from one very unexpected source: KFC.
The Context
This comes in a week where journalist Michael Wolff’s book, titled Fire & Fury, a reference to one of Trump’s comments about North Korea, has been Trump’s biggest headache, which is ironic for a President that doesn’t read.
How Wolff got unfettered access is still in question, but Wolff claims Trump personally okayed it because Trump liked something Wolff wrote about him in the past. Trump now denies this, of course, saying it was then-Chief Strategist Steve Bannon who allowed it.
In this book, Wolff provides an insider look at the first year of the Trump administration, but the part of the book that has caught the most attention has been the events leading up to the election, most notably, how Donald Trump, supposedly, was not expecting to win and did not want to win.
After excerpts (including the one above) from the book were released prior to the book being released, Trump, through his personal lawyer, sent a cease and desist letter to the publisher on January 3rd in hopes of stopping the book’s publication. That, of course, backfired. The book, originally scheduled to be published on January 9th, was published the next day, and demand for the book has now exploded. Happy New Year, Donald Trump.
