President Donald Trump "puts great trust" in the nation's military leaders, and he never ordered a buildup of the nuclear arsenal, despite reports Wednesday that he'd asked why the nation's nuclear numbers could not be increased last summer, Rep. Dan Donovan pointed out Wednesday.
"The president has said we have an aging military," the New York Republican told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program. "He feels the military hasn't been supported by the previous administration. He wants to rebuild it."
According to an NBC News report out on Wednesday, Trump, after seeing a chart showing the nation's nuclear capacity over the years, asked why the United States could not increase its arsenal nearly tenfold.
"He listened to his military leaders and never ordered them to build up the nuclear capacity," Donovan said. "I think that's what part of being the president is. You surround yourself with very smart people."
Donovan, though, said it's "unfair" to infer anything about Trump's failure to tweet anything about the loss of four Green Berets recently killed in Niger.
"I think he has a special place in his heart for women and men who risk their lives for our freedoms, including those four Green Berets," Donovan said. "He tweets when he wants unfiltered messages coming out because he has a distrust. But you can't knock down the president for what happened with those four Green Berets."
Donovan, as member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, also said Wednesday that he does not know where Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker was coming from with his comments that Trump is bringing the United States toward the brink of World War III.
"I think we're pointing a finger, the real devil, the real villain in this is the leader of North Korea, launching rockets over Japan, some of them landing in the Sea of Japan," Donovan said. "In the past administration, we had this patient waiting strategy, which certainly emboldened him . . . this evil one person in North Korea is not just a threat to the united States. He's a threat to China, the Korean peninsula, European allies and a threat to the entire globe."
Meanwhile, Donovan pointed out that Corker heads the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, not the House's.
"That hasn't come from our leader," Donovan said. "So, I don't know what senator Corker's basing that on. I'm not saying it's invalid. I just don't know what he's basing this on"
Donovan's seat is under a primary challenge from former Rep. Mike Grimm, who had resigned from Congress and was sentenced to prison for tax evasion. Donovan, among others, has been targeted by former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon.
The congressman, though, said he would want to remind Bannon that he has supported Trump for 90 percent of the time with his votes.
"Rather than listening to rhetoric of a convicted felon, I think Mr. Bannon would probably examine our records and see that I supported the president 90 percent of the time," Donovan said. "People of Staten Island, Brooklyn, have a choice, a person who was a prosecutor for 20 years and a choice between that and a person who went to prison."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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