December 23, 2016 09:40 AM UTC

America Gave Trump The Bomb...

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• by: Colorado Pols

And as Politico’s Madeline Conway reports, President-elect Donald Trump just figured what that means:

In a series of impromptu statements about nuclear weapons, Donald Trump is threatening to upend longstanding U.S. nonproliferation policy, even as his advisers contradict him and muddy his intentions.

The president-elect had alarmed and perplexed some experts and others in Washington when he pronounced, without offering more details, via Twitter on Thursday that the U.S. “must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”

He further escalated his call on Friday, telling the MSNBC program “Morning Joe” that he is fine with the country taking part in an “arms race” if it puts the U.S. in a stronger position against foreign adversaries…

Trump’s advisors rush to contradict him, but the damage is done:

After the remark was reported on MSNBC, though, incoming Trump press secretary Sean Spicer pushed back and insisted that the remarks came from a “private conversation” with “Morning Joe” host Mika Brzezinski. While he told the “Today” Show’s Matt Lauer that “there is not going to be” an arms race, he told CNN that Trump is not going to “take anything off the table,” either.

The problem with Sean Spicer’s contradictory assurance that there will not be an “arms race” is pretty simple: Trump’s remarks about “greatly expanding” the nation’s “nuclear capability” could be all it takes to start one. There’s really nothing more we can say about this latest extremely irresponsible statement from the President-elect of the United States–since it’s hardly the first thing he has said that has shocked not just America, but the whole world. Upending decades of longstanding policy of working to reduce the threat of a nuclear war, not increase it, is just the latest jaw-dropper.

But if this kind of talk from our incoming President doesn’t frighten you, we honestly don’t know what can.