Russia<\/a> and China had conducted underground nuclear tests unknown to the public, and that the US would test \u201clike other countries do\u201d.<\/p>\n\u201cRussia\u2019s testing, and China\u2019s testing, but they don\u2019t talk about it,\u201d he told 60 Minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to be the only country that doesn\u2019t test,\u201d he said, adding North Korea and Pakistan to the list of nations allegedly testing their arsenals.<\/p>\n
Confusion has surrounded Trump\u2019s order that the US begin testing, particularly if he meant conducting the country\u2019s first nuclear explosion since 1992.<\/p>\n
Trump first made his surprise announcement in a social media post on Thursday, minutes before entering a summit with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, in South Korea, saying he had \u201cinstructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis\u201d.<\/p>\n
The announcement came after Russia said it had tested a new nuclear-powered cruise missile, the Burevestnik, and a nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable underwater drone.<\/p>\n
Asked directly if he planned for the US to detonate a nuclear weapon for the first time in more than three decades, Trump told CBS: \u201cI\u2019m saying that we\u2019re going to test nuclear weapons like other countries do, yes.\u201d<\/p>\n
No country other than North Korea is known to have conducted a nuclear detonation for decades. Russia and China have not carried out such tests since 1990 and 1996, respectively.<\/p>\n
Pressed on the topic, Trump said: \u201cThey test way underground where people don\u2019t know exactly what\u2019s happening with the test. You feel a little bit of a vibration.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Trump\u2019s energy secretary, Chris Wright, on Sunday downplayed any possible tests by the US, telling Fox News on Sunday: \u201cI think the tests we\u2019re talking about right now are system tests. These are not nuclear explosions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The US has been a signatory since 1996 to the comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty, which bans all atomic test explosions, whether for military or civilian purposes.<\/p>\n
Other topics addressed in the interview included:<\/p>\n
Trump said he \u201cwon\u2019t be extorted\u201d by Democrats to reopen the government, making clear that he has no plans to negotiate as the government shutdown will soon enter its sixth week.<\/p>\n
Asked to clarify whether he would try to run for a third term, which is barred by the constitution, Trump said: \u201cI don\u2019t even think about it,\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump said immigration enforcement officials hadn\u2019t gone far enough in deporting people who were in the country without legal authorisation.<\/p>\n
With Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has sent mixed signals about potential US intervention in Venezuela, playing down concerns of imminent war…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-241244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}