Madman on the Potomac
Updated | One nightmare scenario goes like this: Donald Trump emerges from his White House bedroom in the middle of the night, cellphone in hand, enraged by the latest taunt from North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. He spots the military aide sitting in the corridor with a black valise in his lap. It’s called the nuclear football.
“I’m gonna take care of this son of a bitch once and for all,” Trump growls. “Big-time. Gimme the codes.”
The aide cracks open the valise and hands the president a loose-leaf binder with a colorful menu of Armageddon options. They range from total annihilation plans for Russia and China down to a variety of strikes tailored to North Korea.
“I’ll take that one,” Trump says. The aide then hands him an envelope with a set of numbers and letters, the ones that verify it’s really him when he calls Defense Secretary James Mattis. It’s the same code that will go down to theater commanders, B-1 bombers, Wyoming missile silos and submarines lurking off North Korea.
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“Do it,” he tells Mattis. “Wipe him the hell out.”
What was once just a nervous joke among Washington policymakers and military survey of former Pentagon officials and experts.
