Commenting on the news that Donald Trump’s campaign staff have seized his Twitter account so Trump cannot possibly emit any more of his now infamous, self-sabotaging 3AM tweets, President Barack Obama told a crowd at a Hillary Clinton rally in Florida today,
“Apparently, his campaign has taken away his Twitter. In the last two days, they had so little confidence in his self-control, that they said, ‘We’re just going to take away your Twitter.’ ”
“Now, if somebody can’t handle a Twitter account, they can’t handle the nuclear codes. If somebody starts tweeting at 3 in the morning because ‘SNL’ made fun of you, then you can’t handle the nuclear codes.”
More in a moment — I have a very personal and historic connection to Obama’s observation which, regardless of what Vox.com says, is not a joke.
Yesterday, I received what I thought was likely a death-bed request from a friend of mine who is in his eighties, is an acknowledged expert in nuclear deterrence, and during the 1960s may have helped the US Navy wrest exclusive control of the nuclear franchise from Curtis LeMay and his fellow nuts in the Air Force.
My friend had called me from the hospital, after an unexpected emergency operation for a condition that could have quickly killed him. He called me still groggy from the procedure, but desperate to ask if I could possibly help him put out one last meme before voting on Tuesday.
George’s meme was exactly what president Obama just suggested — Donald Trump does not posses the temperament required for a political leader with the power to visit thermonuclear devastation upon most of the Earth.
More in a few minutes, after I take out the dog…
My friend George E. Lowe is, among other things, author of the 1964 book The Age Of Deterrence, published by Little, Brown (I have a copy, and have read it.) It concerned nuclear deterrence theory. You can read some of Lowe’s writing on the subject here in this 1970 article of his published by what was then a quite significant venue, Virginia Quarterly Review.
George Lowe claims to have been in one or more secret high-level US Navy cabals which considered the US Air Force’s exclusive control of US nuclear weapons, during the 1950s and early 1960s under Air Force head Curtis LeMay, to have been highly dangerous.
Lowe, in his several books published after his retirement, has described being involved in an extraordinary secret Navy political and PR campaign, headed by several US Navy Admirals including Senator John McCain’s father and The Doors singer Jim Morrison’s father as well, against the Air Force.
According to Lowe, the cabal’s activities included leaking material which wound up in Stanley Kubrick’s legendary film Dr. Strangelove, as well as popular novels of the day that explored the ramifications of nuclear war and, to say the least, did not reflect well on the air force.
During the 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis, Curtis LeMay did his best to provoke the crisis. John F. Kennedy’s cooler head prevailed. We now know that LeMay’s instincts would have led to the nuclear devastation of major swaths of both the Eastern US and Russia. Or possibly worse.
John F. Kennedy was far from a perfect person. But during those fateful days in 1963 when Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba were ready to launch against the Southeastern US, and US B-52 bombers were ready to begin carpet combing the Soviet Union with thermonuclear ordinance, one man’s temperament was crucial towards to prevention of nuclear holocaust.
That temperament was John F. Kennedy’s.
Donald Trump, who as the 2016 Republican Party Presidential nominee cannot manage even a twitter account, is no John F. Kennedy.