Trump: U.S. nuclear arsenal must be 'at the top of the pack'

Donald Trump.
(Image credit: Pool/Getty Images)

While he would like to live in a world without any nuclear weapons, President Trump told Reuters on Thursday, as it stands today, the United States has "fallen behind on nuclear weapon capacity" and he wants the U.S. arsenal to be "at the top of the pack."

"We're never going to fall behind any country even if it's a friendly country, we're never going to fall behind on nuclear power," he said. The Ploughshares Fund organization says the United States has 6,800 warheads, compared with Russia's 7,000. New START, a strategic arms limitation treaty between the U.S. and Russia, requires that both countries curb their arsenals of strategic nuclear weapons to equal levels by Feb. 5, 2018, keeping them there for 10 years. Trump told Reuters this was a "one-sided deal," and he's "going to start making good deals."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.