Officials with the Department of Homeland Security held an unprecedented meeting during Donald Trump’s presidency to discuss what would happen if the U.S. faced a nuclear attack, according to reports.
in August 2017 that North Korea would face “fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before”—a statement that Taylor said suggested the president “almost seemed to welcome a nuclear conflict, which terrified us.”
North Korea’s testing of a ballistic missile that could reach the continental U.S. in November 2017 “spurred fear throughout the U.S. government,” according to Taylor, though his book reports Trump called then-DHS Secretary Elaine Duke after the test not to talk about North Korea, but rather about immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, seemingly unbothered by the nuclear test.
James Mattis, then the secretary of defense, “cornered” Taylor and warned DHS “need[s] to prepare like we’re going to war,” Taylor wrote, and the agency “should assume the homeland was in mortal danger.” Former DHS official Chris Krebs confirmed Taylor’s report to Politico, saying, “There was certainly a sense that there was a non-zero chance and therefore we should take the appropriate and reasonable steps of assessing readiness for such an attack.”“I cannot provide the details, but I walked out of those meetings genuinely worried about the safety of the country,” Taylor wrote, as quoted by Politico. “In my view, the department was unprepared for the type of nuclear conflict Trump might foment.
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