United States President Donald Trump has suggested multiple times that the country’s military should bomb hurricanes to stop them from making landfall, Axios reported on Sunday.
During a hurricane briefing with top national security and homeland security officials, Trump reportedly said: “I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?”.
“They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they’re moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it,” he was quoted as saying by Axios. “Why can’t we do that?”
One of the officials present at the meeting reportedly said they will look into the matter, according to Axios. The report did not mention when this conversation took place.
It is also reportedly not the first time that Trump has made such a suggestion. In 2017, Trump asked a senior official whether the administration should bomb hurricanes to prevent them from striking the US. The president, however, did not use the term “nuclear” in reference to the conversation.
The White House did not comment about the conversation, but a senior official defended Trump’s ability to ask tough questions, and said: “His goal – to keep a catastrophic hurricane from hitting the mainland – is not bad. His objective is not bad.”
The suggestion to bomb hurricanes was originally made by a government scientist in the 1950s, under President Dwight Eisenhower.
Even as scientists have said the idea would not work, it continues to resurface every now and then.
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