President Donald Trump boldly reasserted a wild claim about America’s capacity to create a global nuclear catastrophe.
The 79-year-old was speaking to reporters at the White House on Wednesday when he mentioned the results of his “tremendous” meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week.
“My doctrine would be denuclearization because we have enough nuclear,” Trump said, before bragging that the U.S. has the most nuclear weapons of any country, with Russia second and China third.
He noted that China are “way behind” but would be equal to Russia within five years because “they are working overtime on nuclear weapons.”
Trump added, “We could blow up the world 150 times, and there’s no need for this.” The president said he had spoken to Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin about potentially downsizing the global nuclear arms race.
“Everybody would like to spend all of that money on other things... things that can benefit people now. So I think something like that could happen.”
“I want peace,” Trump added. “I want peace through strength, but we want peace all over the world. We are very close to getting it. We had a lot of wars raging that people did not know about. Now, they are not raging anymore.”
Trump casually announced through a Truth Social past last month that America would resume nuclear testing after 33 years. The message was sent minutes before his meeting with the Chinese leader.
“The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country. This was accomplished, including a complete update and renovation of existing weapons, during my First Term in office,” Trump wrote. “Because of the tremendous destructive power, I HATED to do it, but had no choice!”
That post also saw Trump air his nuclear ranking of America, Russia and then China, and also pointed out China’s growing arsenal of weapons.
“Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump wrote. “That process will begin immediately.”
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One shortly after his Truth Social post, Trump said “We have more nuclear weapons than anybody. We don’t do testing—halted it many years ago. With others doing testing, I think it’s appropriate that we do testing also.“
The topic also resurfaced during Trump’s 60 Minutes interview on Sunday, again recycling many of the same phrases.
“Well, we have more nuclear weapons than any other country. Russia’s second. China’s a very distant third, but they’ll be even in five years,” Trump told host Norah O’Donnell.
“You know, they’re makin’ ’em rapidly, and I think we should do something about denuclearization... and I did actually discuss that with both President Putin and President Xi. Denuclearization’s a very big thing. We have enough nuclear weapons to blow up the world 150 times.”
While the precise amount of nuclear weapons each country possesses is top secret, the Federation of American Scientists says the U.S and Russia now possess approximately 87 percent of all nuclear weapons on the planet, and 83 percent of the stockpiled warheads available for use by the military.
The Arms Control Association estimates that as of January 2025, the U.S. has around 5,225 warheads, Russia has around 5,580, and China has 600.
