KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: You know, in July, last July, Amy, at a rally in Youngstown, President Trump said, "One speech isn't going to make me presidential. Takes a lot more than that." We heard platitudes and promises. We heard warmongering. We heard a lot about scams.
And I think -- let me step back. You just were talking about Guantanamo. I think one of the ugliest moments was when the president cheered on his move to move the capital of -- the embassy to Jerusalem, along with reopening Gitmo for business. And you had a Republican Party -- let's not forget Trump is the head of a Republican Party -- a radically extreme Republican Party, cheering on defiance of international law and human rights. And I think that was a telltale moment, because that is what this administration is about on the foreign policy front.
He is a false populist. He ran as an ethno-reactionary populist, but a populist. And last night was littered with broken promises, even as he promised more. I'm not going to hold my breath for lower medical -- for lower drug prices, which he spoke of. I'm not going to hold my breath for more treatment of an opioid crisis, which, as you probably know, in 2016 there were more opioid overdoses than combat deaths in Vietnam. And he has scammed the American people with a tax cut I know you've talked a lot about on this program, which was essentially a handout to the very rich and the big corporations and to his own family. And last night he tried to boast that this was a tax cut for the American people.
It is looting our future, what this tax cut does. It fails to invest in a future, which, if the Democrats were wise, they would put out a bold, bold plan in the next few days about what they would do specifically on these issues of jobs, of infrastructure -- not a privatized infrastructure plan -- of real healthcare, Medicare for all, of tuition-free higher ed, and get real specific about what they are going to do for working people in this country -- and working people, by the way, of all colors, because there's too often pitting class versus identity, when, in fact, the working class is brown, black, yellow, white.
AMY GOODMAN: When you talk about pitting, there was direct references to immigrants taking poor Americans' jobs. But I want to go --
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: -- to that issue in a moment, but first to the foreign policy front --
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: -- where President Trump said he would beef up the U.S. nuclear arsenal, dismissing global efforts to ban nuclear weapons.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: As part of our defense, we must modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal, hopefully never having to use it, but making it so strong and so powerful that it will deter any acts of aggression by any other nation or anyone else. Perhaps someday in the future there will be a magical moment when the countries of the world will get together to eliminate their nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, we are not there yet, sadly.
AMY GOODMAN: That was President Trump in his first official State of the Union address. Katrina vanden Heuvel?
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: So, before the nuclear issue, don't forget he also said he wanted to break the spending caps, this defense sequester, the parity between defense and non-defense spending, which is a major issue because so much already goes into defense, not making us more secure. Our Pentagon budget is at an historic high, rife with waste and abuse. We do not need more.
With the modernization of nukes, I think it makes us less secure. And it is a continuation, sadly, of President Obama's plan to modernize the nuclear arsenal. He was going to throw a trillion dollars, I think, over three decades. This is folly. What we should be doing is building down, de-escalating.
What is striking, Amy, is that Trump, as president, has elevated the nuclear issue and the North Korea peril to a new high, because people are concerned about his, quote, "finger on the nuclear button." But we need to be concerned about the security architecture of a nuclear arsenal that is rife with possible accidents, false alerts, as we saw in Hawaii a few weeks ago. And I think, at a minimum, we need to begin to take them off of hair-trigger alert, the nuclear arsenal, and end first use. There is legislation in Congress, as you may know, from Ted Lieu and Senator Markey, to ensure that there be some congressional involvement in any use.
But President Trump probably doesn't know someone -- I don't know how he feels about him, I know how you do. You know, Henry Kissinger, General Shalikashvili, Senator Nunn -- former Senator Nunn, former Clinton Defense Secretary William Perry have all come out for the abolition of nuclear weapons, as have the majority of countries in the world, through the General Assembly at the United Nations last year putting through a treaty, 151 nations, I believe, to seek the build-down and end of nuclear weapons.
That is true security, not a president who talks and rattles his thumbs and his fingers and his Twitter feed against the leader of North Korea, nor is a president who tries to decertify the Iran agreement, which is in our security interest, and, if it's broken, will lead to more nuclear proliferation and less security. This president is clueless when it comes to what real security is.
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