Trump Says Russia, US Nuclear Weapons '500' Times More Powerful Than Hiroshima Atomic Bomb

Former President Donald Trump said the current nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and Russia are much more powerful than the nuclear weapons used during World War II.

In his first TV interview since his indictment over business fraud charges, Trump said nuclear capability was the "biggest" threat facing the world today.

Trump told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the U.S. and Russia currently have weapons that could do "500" times more damage than the bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

"Russia and U.S. are comparable [in nuclear capability]. Massive power," the former president said.

"If you look at Hiroshima, if you look at Nagasaki, you look at those two events many many years ago, and multiply that power, times 500, that's what you're talking about," he added.

Trump argued that nuclear weapons are a bigger threat to humanity than climate change. warning that "all it takes is one madman" to plunge the world into "nuclear warming."

"The biggest problem we have in the whole world, it's not global warming, it's nuclear warming. And all it takes is one madman, and you're gonna have a problem the likes of which the world has never seen," he said. "And it's only a matter of seconds, you're not gonna wait two to 300 years for it to happen."

Trump also warned about the potential use of nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine, saying that Russia is "sitting back."

The real estate mogul said that once Russian President Vladimir Putin decides to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, "that's the end of that."

According to a 2021 report by the State Department, the U.S. had a nuclear stockpile consisting of 3,750 active warheads as of September 2020.

The U.S. nuclear stockpile reached its peak in 1967 with 31,255 warheads and significantly dropped to 22,217 in late 1989.

Meanwhile, according to the Federation of American Scientists, Russia is estimated to have 4,489 active nuclear warheads.

Russia reached its peak nuclear stockpile in 1975, during the Soviet era, at approximately 46,000 warheads.

Both countries signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1968, whose objective is to avoid the proliferation of nuclear weapons and weapons technology and promote the responsible use of nuclear energy.

In 2010, the U.S. and Russia entered into an agreement called the New START, which limits the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550.

The two countries extended the treaty for another five years in 2021.

However, the war in Ukraine strained the nuclear treaty between the U.S. and Russia.

In February, Putin announced the suspension of Russia's participation in the New START treaty, insisting that Moscow would not allow the U.S. and NATO to inspect its nuclear facilities.

Putin also accused the U.S. of rejecting Russia's requests to visit specific American nuclear facilities and of planning to resume nuclear tests.

Following Putin's announcement, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said the notification process under the treaty would be discontinued.