Monday night’s first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton touched on a number of issues, from global warming to stop-and-frisk. But one of the most heated exchanges at the debate took place during a discussion of nuclear weapons, wherein the Republican presidential nominee insisted that the U.S. “can’t take anything off the table” with regards to what weapons the country will or won’t use against other nations.
“Once the nuclear alternative happens, it’s over,” Trump said. “At the same time, we have to be prepared. We can’t take anything off the table.” He went on to discuss the Iran deal in a somewhat unintelligible diatribe:
“You look at some of these countries, you look at North Korea, we’re doing nothing there. China should solve that problem for us. China should go into North Korea. China is totally powerful as it relates to North Korea. And, in fact, that other deal is, in fact, the worst deal I’ve ever seen negotiated — that you started as the Iran deal. Iran is one of their biggest trading partners. Iran has power over North Korea, and when they made that horrible deal with Iran, they should have included the fact that they do something with respect to North Korea. And they should have done something with respect to Yemen, and all these other places.”
Trump closed his speech by calling the Iran deal “one of the worst deals that’s ever been made by any country in history” and insisting that it will lead to unspecified “nuclear problems.” His rant was cut off when moderator Lester Holt reminded him that he’d gone far over his allotted two minutes to speak.
