This may be ABC This Week's most dangerous lie yet

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Today, Martha Raddatz on ABC This Week, tried to assure us that US President Donald Trump can not unilaterally order a nuclear strike:

 

George Stephanopoulos: Martha, on Friday we saw that extraordinary call from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, wanting to know what kind of safeguards were in place to prevent any kind of improper nuclear strike by the president. I think there was surprise that that was made public.

Martha Raddatz: Again adversaries are looking at us every minute, and China and Russia certainly were surprised that that was made public, but Nancy Pelosi was assured that there are procedures in place guaranteeing that there will not be any sort of accidental launch of a nuclear weapon or any sort of illegal launch of a nuclear weapon. There does not seem to be a lot of concern about that just because of those procedures. Many people think there are not enough procedures, and I'll bet you that's something they'll look at in the new administration, but for now they are not concerned about it.

The hole in her claim of protections against “accidental or illegal” launch, is that any order to launch nukes by POTUS is considered legal. All the safety mechanisms in place are designed to protect against an illegal launch by rogue elements in the military. They are all designed to assure that the order actually did come from the president. After that, it's all good. 

In spite of the importance for all US citizens to understand the circumstances and authorities that might lead the United States to launch nuclear weapons, information on procedures for launching nukes is a state secret. This is the most authoritative report I have found, it is titled Defense Primer: Command and Control of Nuclear Forces from the bi-partisan Congressional Research Service, and since it was updated on 3 December 2020, we can be sure it is current, even after Donald Trump clearly lost the election. Here are a few selections from that paper (emphasis added):

The U.S. President has sole authority to authorize the use of U.S. nuclear weapons. This authority is inherent in his constitutional role as Commander in Chief. The President can seek counsel from his military advisors; those advisors are then required to transmit and implement the orders authorizing nuclear use. But, as General John Hyten, then the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), noted during his September 2016 confirmation hearing, his job is to give advice, while the authority to order a launch lies with the president. The President does not need the concurrence of either his military advisors or the U.S. Congress to order the launch of nuclear weapons. In addition, neither the military nor Congress can overrule these orders. As former STRATCOM Commander General Robert Kehler has noted, members of the military are bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice “to follow orders provided they are legal and have come from competent authority.” But questions about the legality of the order—whether it is consistent with the requirements, under the laws of armed conflict (LOAC), for necessity, proportionality, and distinction—are more likely to lead to consultations and changes in the President’s order than to a refusal by the military to execute the order. In this sense, addressing legal questions about an order to use nuclear weapons would seem similar to the process used for evaluating any employment order from the President. The President could delegate the authority to authorize the use of nuclear weapons to others in the chain-of-command(an option considered necessary during the Cold War), but they also could not overrule the President.

In other words, any evaluation of the legality of a presidential nuclear strike order would come after the strike, and not in the five or six minute window that may be available if an adversary was to launch an attack from a boomer close to US shores.

On the The Nuclear Command and Control System(NCCS), the paper says this:

Specifically, the NCCS provides the President “with the means to authorize the use of nuclear weapons in a crisis and to prevent unauthorized or accidental use.”

So, Raddatz is 100% right about protections against an accidental launch, but that's not our current concern, is it? The danger of an accidental or unauthorized launch of nuclear weapons has long been a concern, and deep protections against that have long been in place. What this system never considered, in putting so much power in than hands of one man (a woman has yet to hold such power*) was the possibility that the United States would elect a rogue president like Donald Trump. 

Some may think the president wouldn't be allowed (by who?) to launch a nuclear strike unless missiles were already heading to us first. This Congressional report is also clear on that point:

The United States has never declared a “no first use” policy, and the President could order the first use of nuclear weapons. As noted above, his military advisors may seek to adjust his orders to meet the laws of armed conflict, but there is, otherwise, no legal barrier to first use.

The irony of the current situation is that we are depending on rogue elements in the military to protect us from a “legal" launch order from an unhinged president. But as this report from Bloomberg makes clear, mutiny is unlikely:

It takes just two “votes” to launch the missiles. So even if three two-officer ICBM crews refuse to carry out the order, it won’t stop the launch.

 Also for those who actually believe in Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), it should be a serious security concern that we are announcing that the US can't launch nukes within minutes while Trump is POTUS.

Like Fox News, ABC doesn't want to see Donald Trump impeached for a second time, so they are telling a big lie about the most exigent need to remove Trump immediately. This should surprise no one. As I documented in Bourgeois media resorting to sleight-of-hand to put Trump in the White House, 21 December 2015, ABC News has long been willing to lie to protect Trump.

Beyond this problem of Trump's finger still on the nuclear trigger, there are other important reasons why Trump must be removed from office ASAP. His coup attempt didn't begin or end on 6 January, 2021, it is on-going. He is already apologising to his supporters for appearing to call out their attack on the most democratic branch of government. The right-wing The Western Journal, is reporting today, Breaking: Trump Regrets 'Peaceful Transfer of Power' Video, Vows Not to Resign:

In its reporting of what was taking shape behind the scenes, The New York Times said that in conversations with aides, “Mr. Trump struck a defiant tone, insisting that he would remain a potent force in American politics as aides and allies abandoned him and his post-presidential prospects turned increasingly bleak.”

“Behind closed doors, he made clear that he would not resign and expressed regret about releasing a video on Thursday committing to a peaceful transition of power and condemning the violence at the Capitol that he had egged on a day before,” the Times wrote.

A report in The Daily Beast said Trump loudly proclaimed his intention to remain in office on Friday. 

At the same time, he has refused to disavow a call by his most extreme supporters for an armed march on the US Capitol, and state capitols on 17 November 2021. Twitter said it closed @realDonaldTrump, in part because they fear it would be used to promote additional seditious activity, and that his final tweet, announcing that he wouldn't be at Biden's Inauguration, 20 January 2021, could signal to his most extreme supporters that their hero would not be in harm's way should they plan a mass casualty event at the Inauguration. 

More, later

Clay Claiborne

See also: This may be Fox News' most dangerous lie yet

*This situation where one person can nuke the world must be changed, and no doubt will be changed before a woman becomes commander in chief, just as South Africa was forced to give up its nukes when it stopped being ruled exclusively by whites. This is all for the good, still there is a rotten smell about it.