Fact check: Trump falsely claims Putin didn’t boast of Russia’s nuclear might during the Trump presidency

By Daniel Dale, CNN

Former President Donald Trump has tried to mount an argument that he was a formidable deterrent to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the foreign leader Trump has for years been criticized for praising and defending. But Trump has been making a demonstrably false claim to support his case.

On Friday, in a speech to a National Rifle Association conference in Indianapolis, Trump said that leaders should never use the word “nuclear,” which he described as one of two forbidden “N-words,” but that, under President Joe Biden, Putin has started boasting of Russia’s nuclear capabilities.

“Now it’s talked about every single day, including by Putin. He goes, ‘You know, we’re a great nuclear power.’ He says that publicly now — he never said that when I was here,” Trump said. “Because you don’t talk about it. It’s too destructive. You don’t talk about it. Now they’re talking about it all the time.”

Trump made a broader claim in a video statement in late January, declaring that the word “nuclear” wasn’t even mentioned while he was in the White House.

“If you take a look right now, the ‘nuclear’ word is being mentioned all the time. This is a word that you’re not allowed to use. It was never used during the Trump administration. But now other countries are using that word against us because they have no respect for our leadership,” Trump said then.

Facts First: Trump’s claims are false. During his time in the White House, Putin repeatedly referred to Russia as a “major nuclear power” — in fact, Putin called both Russia and the US “major nuclear powers” as he stood beside Trump at a joint press conference in 2018 — while warning of the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear war and boasting about what he claimed were Russia’s nuclear capabilities.

During a speech in 2018, Putin touted Russia’s nuclear weapons in detail (including a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile he claimed was “invincible”), told the world to “listen now” after supposedly ignoring Russia’s “nuclear potential” in the past, and played a video depiction of nuclear warheads raining down on what appeared to be the state of Florida, home of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort. Trump sharply criticized Putin over the video in a phone call later in the month, the news outlet Axios reported in 2018.

Putin issued a particularly dramatic warning about nuclear war at a forum later in 2018. Repeating his usual line about how he would only use nuclear weapons upon learning of an attack on Russia, he continued, according to a Moscow Times translation, “An aggressor should know that vengeance is inevitable, that he will be annihilated, and we would be the victims of the aggression. We will go to heaven as martyrs, and they will just drop dead. They will not even have time to repent for this.”

Experts reject Trump’s claims

Simon Saradzhyan, founding director of the Russia Matters project at the Harvard Kennedy School, said in an email on Monday: “Putin has repeatedly referred to Russia as a ‘nuclear power’ as well as ‘nuclear superpower‘ since being elected to the post [of] president of Russia in 2000. Such references did not stop when Trump came to power and they continued after Trump left the White House.”

Saradzhyan said his impression is that “Putin began to refer to Russia’s status of a nuclear power more frequently after Feb. 24, 2022,” when Russia invaded Ukraine, “and he used stronger language in an effort to (a) intimidate Ukraine into suing for peace; and (b) deter the US and its allies from greater/direct involvement in the war.” He said Putin toned down his language at least somewhat last fall after Chinese President Xi Jinping called for an end to nuclear threats related to Ukraine.

Regardless, it’s clearly not true that Putin “never” boasted of Russia’s nuclear might, or spoke of nuclear war, under Trump.

“Trump is incorrect here,” Pavel Podvig, senior researcher at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research and director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project research initiative, said in an interview on Monday. “You cannot say that during the Trump presidency, Putin never mentioned nuclear war or anything like that.” Podvig described the 2018 speech in which Putin touted Russia’s missile capabilities as “one big boast.”

Podvig said the context around Putin’s comments on nuclear weapons is obviously different now, given the war in Ukraine, but that “fundamentally there was no change” in Putin’s message between the Trump era and the Biden era: Russia would have the means to respond and would respond to a US attack.

Putin delivered numerous nuclear boasts under Trump

Putin’s boasts under Trump about Russia’s supposed nuclear capabilities were explicit and numerous, though his assertions about Russia’s weaponry were often greeted with skepticism by US officials and outside experts.

For example, in January 2020, Putin said, according to the official Kremlin translation, “For the first time ever — I want to emphasize this — for the first time in the history of nuclear missile weapons, including the Soviet period and modern times, we are not catching up with anyone, but, on the contrary, other leading states have yet to create the weapons that Russia already possesses.” (Kremlin translations sometimes differ in grammar and vocabulary from independent translations of Putin’s remarks.)

In December 2018, Putin criticized the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty under President George W. Bush and said, according to the official translation: “After that, we were forced to respond by developing new weapons systems that could breach these ABM systems. Now, we hear that Russia has gained an advantage. Yes, this is true.” He also issued his standard warning against nuclear war, saying it “might destroy the whole of civilization or perhaps the entire planet.”

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