The real reason Trump wants to let our nuclear weapons treaty with Russia die.

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It’s been a bad habit for a long time, but it’s getting worse: President Donald Trump can’t utter a single statement without lying about his accomplishments or revealing, all too plainly, that self-glorification is what he cares about the most.

Take his post on social media Thursday, affirming—as was clear a few days earlier—that he was going to let New START, the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia, expire this week with barely a shrug.

He wrote: “Rather than extend ‘NEW START’ (a badly negotiated deal … that, aside from everything else, is being grossly violated), we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved, and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future.”

First, though the treaty—which was signed in 2011—no longer addresses all the salient issues of today’s nuclear landscape, it was in fact a brilliantly negotiated accord in its day, mandating the deepest cuts and tightest on-site-inspection clauses in arms-control history.

The real problem with New START, in Trump’s eyes, was the same problem that compelled him to denounce the Iran nuclear deal as “the worst deal ever” before he tore it up in 2018; he hates them because they were both signed by his loathed and envied predecessor, Barack Obama.

Russian President Vladimir Putin—who has, in fact, abided by New START’s numerical limits—proposed that he and Trump extend the accord by one year, but Trump declined. (The treaty allowed for a one-time five-year extension, which Putin and Joe Biden signed back in 2021, perhaps another reason—since he loathes Biden at least as much as he despises  Obama—Trump would rather scuttle the whole deal.)

Then, in this same social media post, for no reason at all (this is the bad habit that I cited at the start of this essay), Trump recites some fibs. For instance: “I completely rebuilt [our] Military in my First Term, including new and many refurbished nuclear weapons.”

This is untrue. Obama approved the development of new nuclear weapons for the entire “strategic Triad”: land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and bombers, as well as new warheads and cruise missiles. (Ironically, he agreed to this as a way of getting Senate hawks to ratify the New START treaty. He was also snookered into this compromise. He agreed to “replace or modernize” the existing arsenal, thinking “modernize” could mean, for instance, upgrading the software on a guidance system. The senators took the term to be synonymous with “replace.”)

During his first term, Trump didn’t add a single new nuclear weapon or accelerate the ones that Obama put in motion. In fact, the first model of the new B-21 bomber took its first flight  during Biden’s presidency.

Trump’s social media post goes on: “I … continue to rebuild our Military at levels never seen before.”

This is palpably untrue. The Pentagon is, by some measures, spending more money than almost ever before, but building—of ships, planes, missiles, or whatever—is not growing so much; it’s dwarfed by the rearmament during World War II or the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

He rambles on: “We are even adding Battleships, which are 100 times more powerful than the ones that roamed the Seas during World War II.”

This is Trump’s big fantasy, stemming from romanticized memories of watching Victory at Sea, the WWII documentary on TV. But no naval officer wants to revive such relics, and it’s extremely unlikely the gigantic boats will ever be built.

Then came this puzzler: “I have stopped Nuclear Wars from breaking out across the World between Pakistan and India, Iran and Israel, and Russia and Ukraine.”

One might have thought Trump had done enough distorting of his record as peacemaker by claiming that he’d “ended eight-plus wars” (most of which either haven’t yet ended or were ended by actors other than Trump). But this new boast, that he’d “stopped Nuclear Wars from breaking out” shows him engaging in new realms of self-delusion.

The latest round of skirmishes between India and Pakistan hardly escalated at all, much less to the brink of nuclear exchanges, before the fighting stopped. (When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi scoffed at Trump’s earlier claim of credit for negotiating the peace, Trump slapped him with 50 percent tariffs, a step he has since reversed.)

Nuclear war between Iran and Israel wasn’t remotely in the offing, in part because Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons. Maybe Trump was thinking that his bombing campaign, which he claimed “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, preempted this possibility. But now satellite images reveal that Iran is repairing the damage done, suggesting he didn’t obliterate the sites after all.

As for Russia and Ukraine, one could argue that by halting weapons deliveries to Ukraine, Trump thwarted Ukraine’s counteroffensive, thus calming Putin’s fear of losing the war, a prospect he might have blocked by going nuclear—but the logical thread is dubious, and in any case this was an act of appeasement, not peace.

Then, Trump returns to New START. Rather than extending it for a year, he writes, “we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved, and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future.”

Ah, yes, a “better” New START, just as Trump talked about a “better” Iran nuclear deal back in 2018 after he ripped up the accord signed by the dread Barack Obama. But he never even tried to negotiate an improved Iran deal; he was hoping, perhaps assuming, that his campaign of “maximum pressure” would bring down Tehran’s regime. (It didn’t; it only accelerated its nuclear program.) It’s unclear what he’s aiming for in refusing to extend New START, but it’s just as unlikely he’ll initiate new strategic arms talks, in part because his administration has no “Nuclear Experts,” none with experience at negotiating arms treaties anyway.

A few days before Trump nailed the coffin on New START, Axios reported that the U.S. and Russia were “closing in on a deal” to extend the treaty. The story further reported that the idea had been proposed, at a recent meeting with Russian diplomats, by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. And why not? Trump has been using this overmatched duo—his son-in-law and his fellow real-estate tycoon—as stand-ins for foreign service officers, gallivanting the globe, trying to make peace deals in Ukraine (fruitless), Gaza (Stage 1 but nothing more), and other hotspots. They know nothing about the old Russian Empire or the Middle East, so why not try their untutored hands at nuclear arms–control talks too? Trump rejected the idea for now, but if he does start new ones, he’ll probably send them to the table.

In any case, New START’s impending expiration has been flashing on the horizon ever since Trump was sworn in for a second term. If he was really serious about negotiating a new, improved treaty, he could have started doing so months ago.

But Trump isn’t interested in the issues, not just on arms control but in general. The most recent case in point—and also the latest chapter in Trump’s quest for immortality—is a report that, during recent talks with Sen. Chuck Schumer, Trump said that he would restore the $16 billion that he’d withdrawn from the Gateway Tunnel—a project to connect New York and New Jersey—if Penn Station and Dulles Airport were renamed after him. (Schumer nixed the notion.)

That says it all. Trump had pretended that he’d killed the tunnel—along with its jobs and improvements in infrastructure—to save money. But in fact, it was all about political punishment (denying funds to blue states) and personal glory (restoring the money for glimmers of immortality).

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Trump wants to emblazon his name on as many grand monuments as he can before he shuffles off this mortal coil: the Trump-Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Trump Institute of Peace, the plans for a new 250-foot-high arch off the Memorial Bridge (the Arc de Trump?), the Trump-class battleships, and so forth.

It’s pathetic. He is the most powerful man on earth, he has tremendous wealth (embellished by $4 billion through his leveraging since retaking the White House). Yet he needs to have his name carved, mounted, blared, memorialized, somehow noticed, everywhere.

He seems unaware that all the other presidential commemorations—JFK Airport, Cape Kennedy, the USS Gerald Ford, Reagan National Airport, the city of Washington, D.C., and all the rest—were set down, or renamed, after their honorees had left public life, in most cases after they died. They were signs of a nation’s respect, or at least wistful nostalgia. The Trump christenings are garish reflections of tawdry egomania.

Many of these monuments will be re-renamed, the gold letters stripped off their walls, soon after Trump leaves office. It will be harder to repair his calamitous policies.

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