[ExI] Wise Donald Trump

Wed Jun 1 23:06:40 UTC 2016

On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 Will Steinberg <steinberg.will at gmail.com> wrote:

> > 
> Do presidents have checks on their ability to launch nukes?
>
> There is a safeguard of sorts but it's not very robust because at the end
of the day there is only
one Commander In Chef.
If the President is nuts we're in deep shit.

The president carries on his person 24/7 a card about the size of a credit
card with the launch code on it and a opaque sticker over it.
I
t's nickname
d
"the biscuit"
 and he
 receives a new card every day. To use it the president must removes the
opaque sticker and
 he
will see
a list of 
several codes, most of the codes are phony so the president must memorize
where on the list the correct code is located. Nobody on Earth knows both
what is on the the daily biscuit and where on the biscuit the correct code
is until the president takes off that opaque sticker over the card, then
one person knows.

The 
(weak)
 safeguard is that the 
secretary of Defense

must agree
,
but if he doesn't

the president can fire him and then The Deputy Secretary of Defense
 must agree, and if he does't the president can fire him too and then just
keep going down the line of top defense department officials until he finds
somebody who does agree; given the fact the president originally appointed
all these people I don't imagine it would take long before he finds
somebody who agrees with him.  

After that the
 president must then contact the National Military Command Center
over a secure channel 
and
read off
the launch code
 from the correct place on the biscuit. And after that the world ends.

Now imagine that a super thin skinned ill tempered illogical ignorant
megalomaniac had the biscuit in his pocket and knew were on the biscuit the
genuine launch code was, and imagine that this nightmare went on for 4
years. Now maybe you can understand why Stephen King said the thought of
Donald Trump being president was scarier than anything he ever wrote.

I think Trump is the sort of person who would rather die than loose face,
or to be more specific would rather destroy the world than be embarrassed.
Someday something like the Cuban Missile Crises could happen again, and on
that day if the president is more like Trump than like Kennedy we're all
dead.

 John K Clark

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