Report: Trump Has Repeatedly Suggested Nuking Hurricanes

"You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting."

Nuking Hurricanes

President Donald Trump has repeatedly floated a bizarre idea for preventing hurricanes from reaching American shores, several sources told Axios in a newly published story.

"I got it. I got it. Why don't we nuke them?" one of the anonymous sources paraphrased the President as saying during a hurricane briefing. "They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can't we do that?"

"Fake News"

According to Axios' source, the President's suggestion of nuking hurricanes was met by stunned silence.

"You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting," they told Axios. "People were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, 'What the f---? What do we do with this?'"

The President, meanwhile, denies ever making the suggestion.

"The story by Axios that President Trump wanted to blow up large hurricanes with nuclear weapons prior to reaching shore is ridiculous," Trump tweeted, in the third person. "I never said this. Just more FAKE NEWS!"

Old Idea

Surprisingly, this isn't the first time someone has suggested nuking hurricanes. In fact, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration even addresses the idea — and explains why it's a bad one — on its Tropical Cyclone Myths Page.

"Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems," the NOAA wrote. "Needless to say, this is not a good idea."

READ MORE: Scoop: Trump suggested nuking hurricanes to stop them from hitting U.S. [Axios]

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