President Donald Trump discussed a certain “n-word”—this one meaning “nuclear”—in a Fox News interview Friday.
The president went back to that bit of his while discussing the recent ceasefire between India and Pakistan—two nuclear-armed nations—with Special Report anchor Bret Baier.
After Baier framed the May 10 ceasefire—which Trump said was mediated by the U.S.—as a “foreign policy success,” the president described the escalating issue with an odd choice of words.
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“They were angry, and the next phase was probably—did you see where it was getting? It was tit-for-tat. It was getting deeper and more, I mean, more missiles. Everyone was stronger, stronger, to a point where the next ones are going to be you know what: the n-word,” Trump said.
“You know what the n-word is, right?” he asked Baier, who replied: “nuclear.”
“Yeah,” Trump affirmed, as the two chuckled about it.
“Thank you for the clarification,” Baier said.
“I figured you’d want to clean that up,” continued Trump, who has been accused by his niece, his nephew, and a producer on The Apprentice of using the racial slur.
“No, it’s the n-word. It’s a very nasty word, right? In a lot of ways. The n-word used in a nuclear sense—that’s the worst thing that can happen,” he said.
The Trump administration’s mediator role in the conflict was reportedly sparked in part by what Vice President J.D. Vance had said on Fox: that what was happening between the two countries was “fundamentally none of our business.”
That caused alarm in the administration that things could get out of hand if the U.S. sat on the sidelines, The New York Times reported.
And so the next day, Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged top officials in both countries to end the fighting.
Hostilities between the neighboring countries had ramped after an April terrorist attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir killed 26 civilians. India blamed Pakistan, which denied involvement.
