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Story highlights
Trump could have less than 15 minutes to decide whether to order a nuclear strike
A president's order could only be stopped by mutiny
WashingtonCNN
—
Beginning on January 20, President-elect Donald Trump will be accompanied at all times by a military aide carrying the nuclear “football,” enabling him to order a nuclear strike at a moment’s notice.
Just like his predecessors, whether he is at the White House, in a motorcade, aboard Air Force One or on a trip overseas, he will never be more than an arm’s reach away from the aide and his satchel.
“You have to be ready anytime, for any moment,” said Pete Metzger, who often carried the nuclear launch suitcase during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. “The time is so short between alert and execution.”
Less than 15 minutes in the case of an emergency
Trump, like other presidents before him, could have less than 15 minutes in the case of an emergency to get briefed by military aides and make a decision on whether to order a nuclear strike.
“Donald Trump will have the unfettered ability to wage nuclear war,” said Joseph Cirincione at The Ploughshares Fund, an anti-nuclear organization. “He can launch one weapon or a thousand weapons, and no one can stop him, outside of mutiny by the armed forces.”
Contrary to popular mythology, the “nuclear football” does not contain a button but instead the equipment and the decision-making papers that Trump would use to authenticate his orders and launch a strike.
Photos: Donald Trump's rise
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President-elect Donald Trump has been in the spotlight for years. From developing real estate and producing and starring in TV shows, he became a celebrity long before winning the White House.
Photos: Donald Trump's rise
Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.
Trump at age 4. He was born in 1946 to Fred and Mary Trump in New York City. His father was a real estate developer.
Photos: Donald Trump's rise
Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.
Trump, left, in a family photo. He was the second-youngest of five children.
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Trump, center, stands at attention during his senior year at the New York Military Academy in 1964.
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Trump, center, wears a baseball uniform at the New York Military Academy in 1964. After he graduated from the boarding school, he went to college. He started at Fordham University before transferring and later graduating from the Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania's business school.
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Trump stands with Alfred Eisenpreis, New York's economic development administrator, in 1976 while they look at a sketch of a new 1,400-room renovation project of the Commodore Hotel. After graduating college in 1968, Trump worked with his father on developments in Queens and Brooklyn before purchasing or building multiple properties in New York and Atlantic City, New Jersey. Those properties included Trump Tower in New York and Trump Plaza and multiple casinos in Atlantic City.
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Trump attends an event to mark the start of construction of the New York Convention Center in 1979.
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Trump wears a hard hat at the Trump Tower construction site in New York in 1980.
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Trump was married to Ivana Zelnicek Trump from 1977 to 1990, when they divorced. They had three children together: Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric.
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The Trump family, circa 1986.
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Trump uses his personal helicopter to get around New York in 1987.
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Trump stands in the atrium of the Trump Tower.
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Trump attends the opening of his new Atlantic City casino, the Taj Mahal, in 1989.
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Trump signs his second book, "Trump: Surviving at the Top," in 1990. Trump has published at least 16 other books, including "The Art of the Deal" and "The America We Deserve."
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Trump and singer Michael Jackson pose for a photo before traveling to visit Ryan White, a young child with AIDS, in 1990.
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Trump dips his second wife, Marla Maples, after the couple married in a private ceremony in New York in December 1993. The couple divorced in 1999 and had one daughter together, Tiffany.
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Trump putts a golf ball in his New York office in 1998.
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An advertisement for the television show "The Apprentice" hangs at Trump Tower in 2004. The show launched in January of that year. In January 2008, the show returned as "Celebrity Apprentice."
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A 12-inch talking Trump doll is on display at a toy store in New York in September 2004.
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Bebeto Matthews/AP
Trump attends a news conference in 2005 that announced the establishment of Trump University. From 2005 until it closed in 2010, Trump University had about 10,000 people sign up for a program that promised success in real estate. Three separate lawsuits -- two class-action suits filed in California and one filed by New York's attorney general -- argued that the program was mired in fraud and deception. Trump's camp rejected the suits' claims as "baseless." And Trump has charged that the New York case against him is politically motivated.
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Trump attends the U.S. Open tennis tournament with his third wife, Melania Knauss-Trump, and their son, Barron, in 2006. Trump and Knauss married in 2005.
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Trump wrestles with "Stone Cold" Steve Austin at WrestleMania in 2007. Trump has close ties with the WWE and its CEO, Vince McMahon.
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For "The Apprentice," Trump was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in January 2007.
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Trump appears on the set of "The Celebrity Apprentice" with two of his children -- Donald Jr. and Ivanka -- in 2009.
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Trump poses with Miss Universe contestants in 2011. Trump had been executive producer of the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants since 1996.
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In 2012, Trump announces his endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
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Trump speaks in Sarasota, Florida, after accepting the Statesman of the Year Award at the Sarasota GOP dinner in August 2012. It was shortly before the Republican National Convention in nearby Tampa.
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Trump appears on stage with singer Nick Jonas and television personality Giuliana Rancic during the 2013 Miss USA pageant.
Trump -- flanked by U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio, left, and Ted Cruz -- speaks during a CNN debate in Miami on March 10. Trump dominated the GOP primaries and emerged as the presumptive nominee in May.
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The Trump family poses for a photo in New York in April.
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Trump speaks during a campaign event in Evansville, Indiana, on April 28. After Trump won the Indiana primary, his last two competitors dropped out of the GOP race.
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Trump delivers a speech at the Republican National Convention in July, accepting the party's nomination for President. "I have had a truly great life in business," he said. "But now, my sole and exclusive mission is to go to work for our country -- to go to work for you. It's time to deliver a victory for the American people."
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Trump faces Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the first presidential debate, which took place in Hempstead, New York, in September.
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Donald Trump/Twitter
Trump apologizes in a video, posted to his Twitter account in October, for vulgar and sexually aggressive remarks he made a decade ago regarding women. "I said it, I was wrong and I apologize," Trump said, referring to lewd comments he made during a previously unaired taping of "Access Hollywood." Multiple Republican leaders rescinded their endorsements of Trump after the footage was released.
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Trump walks on stage with his family after he was declared the election winner on November 9. "Ours was not a campaign, but rather, an incredible and great movement," he told his supporters in New York.
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Trump is joined by his family as he is sworn in as President on January 20.
The Presidential Emergency Satchel, as it is formally called, contains four things, according to former White House Military Office Director Bill Gulley’s book “Breaking Cover.”
There is a black book listing a menu of strike options; a 3-by-5-inch card with authentication codes for the president to confirm his identity; a list of secure bunkers where the president can be sheltered; and instructions for using the Emergency Broadcast System.
On Inauguration Day, the aide with the satchel will arrive at the swearing-in accompanying President Barack Obama, and after the ceremony, will accompany Trump.
Trusting Trump with nuclear codes
Not everyone is comfortable with the prospect.
“How can you trust him with the nuclear codes?” Obama said at a rally in Durham, North Carolina, earlier this month. “You can’t do it.”
And Bruce Blair, a former nuclear missile launch officer who supported Hillary Clinton, says his concerns about Trump persist.
“He has proved himself over and over again to be quick-tempered, defensive, prone to lash out,” he wrote in Politico. If a nuclear crisis arises, “Trump’s erratic and volatile personality makes for low confidence in his ability to reach the right decision.”
A president’s order could only be stopped by mutiny, according to Kingston Reif at the Arms Control Association, and only if more than one person were to disobey the president’s orders.
“The president has supreme authority to decide whether to use America’s nuclear weapons, period,” he said. “Full stop.”
Trump’s transition team did not respond to an inquiry to clarify his nuclear policy. But his rhetoric on the campaign trail may have fed the concerns of his national security critics.
“Somebody hits us within ISIS, you wouldn’t fight back with a nuke?” he said to Chris Matthews on MSNBC in March.
But he was more tempered during an interview on NBC’s “Today” show in April.
“I will be the last to use it. I will not be a happy trigger, like some people might be,” he said.
Trump’s stance on Iran worries proliferation experts
Still, Trump’s disdain for the agreement with Iran to limit their nuclear program has worried proliferation experts, as has his stated openness to allies like Japan obtaining nuclear weapons of their own if they refuse to contribute more to American military protection.
“Wouldn’t you rather in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons?” he said to CNN in March.
A few days later, he walked that back – but only partially.
“I would rather have them not armed,” he said at a rally in Wisconsin. “But I’m not going to continue to lose this tremendous amount of money. And frankly, the case could be made that, let them protect themselves against North Korea.”
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Cirincione said that Trump is undermining a decades-long American stance against nuclear proliferation. And by making America’s defense of allies like South Korea and Japan contingent on their paying more to the US, he said, Trump may prompt nervous allies to wonder whether they need to obtain nuclear weapons systems of their own.
“The president of the United States must be absolutely clear that we do not want them to do that,” he said. “That is not the path to security.”
Metzger said that, in his experience at least, the president takes the responsibility of the nuclear codes very seriously.
“The president is well enough rehearsed in these things to know, if I come in and look them in the eye, he or she knows there’s something going on. I’m not coming in to order breakfast,” he said.
“The result of a decision the president would make is so grotesquely horrible – it would change the face of the earth, it would change humanity, it would change mankind.”
