Donald Trump has been excoriated by the liberal media (the “liberal” label is actually redundant) for his ideas on nuclear weapons. Chicago Tribune windbag David Chapman, for example, had this to say:

“In a campaign that appears to be systematically engineered to disqualify him from consideration for any position of responsibility, nothing comes close to his pronouncements on nuclear weapons.”

Wow, you’d think from that screed that trump was just itching to “Nuke ‘em ’til they glow”. But is it the truth?

In a word, no. I’ve actually found what he’s said to make quite a bit of sense. When we remove the hysteric reaction of the mewling jackasses of the world from the equation, what we have left are what I think are some intelligent and thought-provoking comments. Let’s take a look at the most controversial one at a time:

“Trump said he might use nuclear weapons and questioned why we would make them if we wouldn’t use them.” Uh, OK genius. Do you want a President who would refuse to use them even if we were being attacked by nukes ourselves? How about if NATO were attacked? Because if you do, you don’t have a problem with Trump: you have a problem with America’s stated policy for the last 50 plus years.

And as to “why we would make them if we wouldn’t use them”, Trump makes a good point, because in the real world, as soon as we made them, we used them. It’s asinine to think it could never happen again. No one wants it to, including Trump, who had this to say about it: “The last person that wants to play the nuclear card believe me is me.” Yet the world is unpredictable, and to pretend that something’s “unthinkable” because it’s too scary is childish and irresponsible. We need to think about it, and fortunately, we have adults in the Pentagon who do so all the time.

Trump “has been talking about the option of using a nuclear weapon against our Western European allies” says a Clinton ad. This is an outright lie. Trump has simply said he refuses to take the use of nukes “off the table” in the event of a European war, and he obviously meant against enemies attacking Europe. Again, the use of nuclear weapons in the European theater is well established doctrine that predates Trump by decades.

Even the New York Times agrees:
“Should Mr. Trump openly question whether nuclear weapons could be usable, he would not be the first. During the early decades of the Cold War, as the Soviet Union and United States gamed out a possible war in Europe, both considered a nuclear chain of events that could be winnable. Eisenhower considered using nuclear weapons in Korea, as did President Richard M. Nixon in Vietnam.”

According to MSNBC, “Donald Trump asked a foreign policy expert advising him why the U.S. can’t use nuclear weapons…” Of course, the “unnamed source” says this happened during an untaped interview. Trump campaign HQ denies it. ‘Nuff said. Except that MSNBC makes Pravda look scholarly and balanced.

Trump is all for nuclear proliferation. Here there is a little more substance, because he did imply that he wanted Japan and South Korea to start footing the bill for their own defense, and if they didn’t, they should pay for their own protection-and this was within the context of an interview at CNN about nuclear weapons.  However, he later clarified that it wasn’t his intention to endorse nuclear proliferation for Japan or anyone else. Trump has also said that the “Biggest problem, to me, in the world, is nuclear, and proliferation..” However, he’s realistic about it: “Can I be honest with you? It’s going to happen, anyway. It’s going to happen anyway. It’s only a question of time. They’re going to start having them or we have to get rid of them entirely…”

Well, that’s true, isn’t it? Unfortunately, we can’t put the nuclear genie back in the bottle. Other countries will indeed acquire them ,whether we like it or not. No one wanted Pakistan to get them. Or North Korea. Or India. Or Israel. But they all got them anyway, and it’s naive to think others will remain frozen out of the nuke club forever-as well as disingenuous to castigate a man for saying so.

Like most of the (((media))) coverage of Trump’s candidacy, the brouhaha over his nuclear comments consists mostly of deliberate misrepresentations, comical pearl-clutching, and outright lies designed to promote their candidate of choice, political insider and consummate liar Hillary Clinton. But then, I no longer expect the mainstream media to do its job. Pity that.

Yet Trump’s message on nuclear weapons is consistent with his economic platform. He recognizes that we cannot continue to spend more on defense than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, the UK, India, and Germany combined without bankrupting us, so, just as he seeks fair trade deals with China, Japan, and others, he is looking for the rest of the world to help pay for its own defense as well. That this idea seems so outrageous, radical, and dangerous to the status quo is more a sign of how insane our foreign policy has become than any negative reflection on Trump’s proposals.

I will leave you with this: for those of you concerned about what Trump has said about our national defense, consider what Hillary Clinton has actually done: She has never seen a war she didn’t like, whether it was her husband’s adventures in Serbia, in which the USA established Europe’s first Muslim nation, or the trillion dollar Iraq fiasco, or the ongoing war in Afghanistan, or the confused mess in Syria, Hillary was all for it. But the most damning indictment of Hillary, at least to me, comes from this video, in which she cackles over the death of Muammar Ghadaffi.  Do you really want that reptilian claw on the nuclear button?