Trump Escalates Nuclear Brinksmanship with Russia Over Social Media Spat
It was not immediately clear if any U.S. submarines changed their course. The Pentagon referred a request for more information to the White House, which did not immediately respond.
Trump wrote the comments in response to former Russian president Dmitri Medvedev's online posts invoking reports about a Cold War-era Soviet nuclear strategy known as 'The Dead Hand' designed to deploy nuclear weapons even if the humans assigned to operate the weapons had been killed in a first strike. The Russian government has not officially confirmed the capability, but in 2011, a retired commander of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces claimed it could be reactivated if needed.
Writing on his social media website Truth Social, Trump called Medvedev's statements 'highly provocative' and said he said he took action as a precaution. 'I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that,' Trump wrote. 'Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances.'
Trump was responding to an online post Medvedev wrote on Thursday that President Trump should remember movies about zombies and hinted at how 'dangerous' a Russian nuclear retaliation could be. 'Let him remember his favorite movies about 'The Walking Dead,' as well as how dangerous the non-existent in nature 'Dead Hand' can be,' Medvedev wrote.
The online spat between Trump and Medvedev, who often serves as the Kremlin's Twitter troll, had played out earlier in the day. After Medvedev had rejected Trump's shorter deadline for Russia to agree to a peace deal in Ukraine, Trump criticized him on Truth Social. Trump told Medvedev to 'watch his words,' called him a 'failed former President of Russia,' and said he was 'entering very dangerous territory.'
It's not the first time Trump has used social media to send a signal about the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In December 2016, after he was elected President the first time, Trump wrote on Twitter that the U.S. 'must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability.' The comments at the time raised concerns that Trump would spark a new arms race by increasing the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons, which had been reduced through arms control agreements with Russia after the end of the Cold War. Trump has proposed increasing spending on nuclear forces, but the total number of U.S. warheads has declined since hitting a peak in the late 1960s and has largely remained the same in recent years.
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Newsweek
2 minutes ago
- Newsweek
Ukraine Strikes Strategic Russian Shahed Air Base in Precision Attack
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Politico
8 minutes ago
- Politico
The new master of the Senate
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The Hill
31 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump labor secretary touts ‘native-born' share of job gains
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer touted that native-born employment increased in the latest dismal jobs report, which showed the U.S. added only 73,000 jobs in July. While calling for the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell to cut interest rates, Chavez-Deremer argued that businesses need to be able to borrow money at a lower rate so they can invest in their companies. She then pointed to the data about jobs for American-born workers. 'We've seen positive job growth. We have seen consumer confidence go up. We've seen unemployment hold steady,' Chavez-DeRemer said Friday in an interview with Fox Business. 'While we could have seen better jobs numbers, right now we're seeing American workers are being put first — native-born workers account for all of the job growth and that's key.' 'We're setting the table for a positive economy and the American worker is going to win in this occasion because the president has their back,' she told 'Varney & Co' host Stuart Varney. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report released on Friday suggested the economy and labor market are much weaker than previously thought. The report though found that job growth among American-born individuals was 133,035,000, an increase from 131,037,000 for the same month in 2024. Among foreign-born individuals, employment declined to 30,764,000 in July from 31,001,000 a year ago. President Trump's response to the jobs report was furious. He fired BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer, accusing her, without evidence, of politicizing previous job reports in the run-up to last year's presidential election. Chavez-DeRemer praised Trump's decision, saying she agreed 'our jobs numbers must be fair, accurate, and never manipulated for political purposes,' without offering any evidence to support Trump's claim.
