Trump suggested nuking hurricanes: Report

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IANS | 26 Aug, 2019
US President Donald Trump has suggested multiple times to senior Homeland Security and national security officials that they explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the country, a media report said.

According to the report by American news outlet Axios, during one hurricane briefing at the White House, Trump said: "I got it. I got it. Why don't we nuke them?"

"They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can't we do that?" a source present at the briefing told Axios quoting the President as saying

Asked how the briefer reacted, the source recalled he said something to the effect of, "we'll look into that".

Trump replied by asking incredulously how many hurricanes the US could handle and reiterating his suggestion that the government should intervene before they make landfall.

The briefer "was knocked back on his heels", the source said, adding "People were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, 'What do we do with this?'."

Trump also raised the idea in another conversation with a senior administration official.

A 2017 National Security Council (NSC) memo describes that second conversation, in which Trump asked whether the administration should bomb hurricanes to stop them from hitting the homeland.

A source briefed on the NSC memo told Axios that it does not contain the word "nuclear", but it just says that the President talked about bombing hurricanes.

Regarding the development, a senior administration told the news outlet on Sunday: "We don't comment on private discussions that the president may or may not have had with his national security team."

The ongoing 2019 Atlantic Hurricane season in the US that officially began on June 1, will end on November 30.

Hurricane Barry made landfall in the state of Louisiana in July. This was the first hurricane of the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season.