The Trump Files: Donald’s Nuclear Negotiating Fantasy

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In the 1980s, Donald Trump became a global symbol of wealth and success who was planning to build the tallest skyscraper in the world. But the one deal he really wanted to cut was an arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union that would take nuclear missiles off the Cold War’s battlefield. It’s now clear that Trump knows quite literally nothing about nuclear weapons, but then he fantasized going toe-to-toe with the Russkies at the nuclear bargaining table.

“It’s something that somebody should do that knows how to negotiate and not the kind of representatives that I have seen in the past,” he told the Washington Post in 1984. “It would take an hour-and-a-half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles…I think I know most of it anyway.”

Three years later, growing even more alarmed about Libya and other rogue nations getting the bomb, he told author Ron Rosenbaum that he was indeed working with the Reagan White House on nukes. “I’m dealing at a very high level on this,” he said.

Trump was frightened about the spread of nuclear technology—he seemed at one point during the interview to suggest the United States should bomb France to keep it from selling nuclear know-how—and worried about the deal-making skills of American officials. “They have no smiles, no warmth; there’s no sense of them as people,” Trump complained. “Who the hell wants to talk to them? They don’t have the ability to go into a room and sell a deal. They’re not sellers in the positive sense.”

“I used to laugh when I thought back on Trump and me in [the 21 Club] talking nukes,” Rosenbaum wrote for Slate this year. “I’m not laughing anymore.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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