The comments came during a discussion of Joe Biden’s handling of relations with Iran, as Trump criticised the White House incumbent’s reluctance to take out Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Nuclear weapons, the Republican candidate said, are “the biggest threat we have in the world today”, adding: “it’s not global warming, where the oceans are rising 1/8 of an inch in the next 500 years.”

Throughout Trump’s initial 2016 campaign and his time in office, his critics frequently cited the risk of nuclear war as a primary reason why he shouldn’t be in office, pointing to his unpredictability as a risk factor. Those fears were amplified when, in 2018, Trump taunted Kim Jong Un on Twitter, writing: “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”

Despite his provocative comments to world leaders, Trump has campaigned as a dove on foreign policy, frequently boasting throughout his 2024 campaign that there were no new wars involving the US during his presidency. Earlier this week, he told conservative commentator Ben Shapiro that his foreign policy was “peace through strength”, adding: “I’m not an isolationist. I helped a lot of countries. I kept countries out of war.”

His dovish streak long predates this campaign cycle. Trump’s rise to power in 2016 coincided with the GOP’s isolationist realignment on foreign policy, and during his initial campaign he became one of the first GOP candidates to openly criticise the war in Iraq, calling it “a big mistake”.

“It only takes one,” Trump said of nuclear weapons during the Wednesday interview. “They have five countries now that have capability, and soon they’ll have more. And we shouldn’t let there be more.”

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is UnHerd’s US correspondent.

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