At the July 20 meeting in the Pentagon that reportedly prompted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to call President Trump a "moron," Trump told the assembled military and national security leaders that he wanted "what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal," NBC News reported Wednesday, citing "three officials who were in the room." Trump had apparently just been shown a slide charting the decline in the number of America's nuclear weapons since the late 1960s, from about 32,000 nukes to some 4,000 warheads today, and Trump reportedly said he wanted to return to the number America had at its peak.
Tillerson and Trump's other advisers were "surprised" and other officials "rattled by the president's desire for more nuclear weapons and his understanding of other national security issues from the Korean peninsula to Iraq and Afghanistan," NBC News reports, and "officials briefly explained the legal and practical impediments to a nuclear buildup and how the current military posture is stronger than it was at the height of the build-up." No such buildup is planned, NBC News says, but "officials said they are working to address the president's concerns within the Nuclear Posture Review."
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