Well, well, yet another thing to blame on Donald Trump:
The Doomsday Clock just moved 30 seconds closer to midnight.
That cheer you hear is the Mayans. Finally, they’re off the hook for the end of the world.
“Mr. Trump’s statements and actions have been unsettling,” declared the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the clock’s watchers, in New York Thursday.
“He has made ill-considered comments about expanding and even deploying the American nuclear arsenal,” the scientists added, clearly unsettled.
Indeed, Trump has had his pudgy finger on the red button since last Friday. And he’s no global warming warrior, either, which has the scientists extra unsettled.
So synchronize your watch, fellow earthlings. The Doomsday Clock’s hand is now just two and a half minutes to midnight.
It hasn’t been so close to Armageddon since 1953, when the U.S. and Soviets played duelling hydrogen bomb tests and the minute hand stood at two. Back then, of course, “climate change” meant a trip to Florida.
It’s not all Trump, the scientists said.
In the past year, they lamented Thursday, “the global security landscape darkened as the international community failed to come effectively to grips with humanity’s most pressing existential threats: Nuclear weapons and climate change.”
But it’s <i>mostly<i> Trump who’s unsettling those scientists
“The United States now has a president who has promised to impede progress on both those fronts,” they warned.
Well, actually, he’s mostly tweeted about it, but it’s true some of those missives have been thermonuclear. Such as this one in late December:
“The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”
Funny, but Barack Obama could have written that tweet, which the scientists forgot to mention.
Obama launched a US$348-billion upgrade of America’s nuclear arsenal starting in 2015, including new missile systems and warheads, reported Forbes.
Why the instant arms race? Because Vladimir Putin started it, rattling his nuclear sabre all around eastern Europe.
