Subscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:

This week, Trump made a dangerous announcement on Truth Social: “Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.”

Chemical engineer Ivana Nikolić Hughes joins Useful Idiots to debunk Trump’s claim that other countries have conducted tests, and more importantly why doing our own tests could lead to catastrophic disaster. Or, in her words: “Nuclear winter.”

Useful Idiots: What if someone were to say, ‘What’s wrong with a nuclear test? It’s just a test. And shouldn’t we know whether these systems are working? What’s the problem?’

Ivana Nikolić Hughes: The word test, actually, is just the wrong word for what took place in these more-than-2,000 full-blown nuclear explosions. The largest test that the United States ever conducted was called the Bravo Test. And it had the energy yield equivalent to a thousand Hiroshima bombs. So Hiroshima flattened the city, this thing was a thousand times more powerful and had a mushroom cloud twenty five miles high and sixty miles wide. There was nothing “testy” about this. This was a full blown monster .

And the fallout was tremendous. There was destruction of cities, but the radiation has been absolutely devastating. Generations have been impacted by it in the US. We think of the Cold War as having had no victims. But in fact, the victims were created by their own governments. It wasn’t Soviet people being killed by US nuclear weapons. It was American citizens being killed.

Useful Idiots: According to people like House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senator Tom Cotton, having a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons ‘keeps the peace’ and preserves global stability.

Ivana Nikolić Hughes: My response is that nuclear deterrence might work until the day it doesn’t. I always want to tell people we’re not exaggerating this thing. It’s going to be the end of the world as we know it. People write comments when I speak about this, they go ‘Oh but Hiroshima and Nagasaki are just fine today.’

Which they are. In 1945, one country had three nuclear weapons. Today, nine countries have twelve and a half thousand of them.

Useful Idiots: So going back to Trump’s statement, he seems to confuse testing a nuclear-capable missile versus testing a nuclear weapon itself. But he also seems confused on what the powers of the Pentagon are. Because he says, I’ve directed Secretary Hegseth to carry out testing, but is it as simple as that? Can he just direct the Pentagon to test a nuclear weapon?

Subscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:

New York Times investigative reporter Ken Vogel’s new book, Devils’ Advocates: How Washington Lobbyists Get Rich Enabling Dictators, Oligarchs, and Arms Dealers, unearths the shrouded power that lobbyists hold over the US government, from AIPAC, Soros, and Kushner to powers you’ve never even heard of.

We begin with the president’s son-in-law, who was just revealed by Vice President JD Vance to be the “investor” behind the ethnic-cleansing “reconstruction” of Gaza.

Useful Idiots: Jared Kushner doesn’t have an official role in this White House, but yet is overseeing arguably the biggest geopolitical issue in the world, and that is the crisis in Israel-Palestine. Steve Witkoff made a reference to a “master plan” for Gaza devised by Jared Kushner.

Talk to us about how Kushner has gone from serving in Trump’s first term to his time out of the White House, making a lot of lucrative deals, including in the Middle East, and now being described by J.D. Vance as the “investor” in Trump’s peace plan in Gaza.

Ken Vogel: You’ve got to go back even before he entered the first Trump administration when he was in New York real estate. And his biggest project was a massive boondoggle, giant building in Manhattan. And he got bailed out by the Qataris.

And then he comes into the Trump administration and he’s helping to navigate this blockade that the Saudis and the Emiratis had on the Qataris. They don’t shy away from it. Maybe in the first term they were a little bit more bashful, but then as soon as the first term ends, Kushner hangs out his shingle, Affinity Partners, and gets a $2 billion investment from the Saudis.

On 60 Minutes [this week], Leslie Stahl asked Kushner and Witkoff, “Isn’t this a conflict of interest? You have all this business in the region.” And Kushner said, “Well, we actually consider it a strength. We consider it experience and trusted relationships.” There’s certainly plenty of situations where there is US policy being set in a way that favors business partners of the Trump family or the Witkoffs or Massad Boulos and his family that is arguably not in the best interest of the American people and does seem to be a conflict of interest in the favor of the people who are putting money in the president’s family’s pockets.

There are laws and norms that are intended to prevent that kind of thing. And the Trump folks in the second term seem to be fairly emboldened to just test those norms and openly defy them.

Useful Idiots: Trump recently gave a speech at the Israeli Knesset where he openly flaunted the fact that he did the bidding of Miriam Adelson, who gave him more than $100 million. How does a group like AIPAC, whatever you think of them, how do they avoid registering as a foreign agent?

After claiming that Donald Trump’s son-in-law no longer has a role in the current administration, JD Vance went to Palestine this week to announce the new “investor” of his ethnic-cleansing plan for the reconstruction of Gaza: Jared Kushner. Which means that after killing or removing every Palestinian from their home, it will be Trump’s own family that profits off the new resort, or “freedom place” as Trump called it, once known as Gaza.

Interestingly, Kushner noted that “no reconstruction funds will go into Hamas-controlled areas” of Gaza. But by the administration’s logic, isn’t that all of Gaza? Sorry Jared, we guess you can’t build after all.

But Kushner and Vance aren’t the only ones spewing insanity over Gaza, which means this Thursday Throwdown is gonna be a headache. NYC Democratic Congressman Dan Goldman (heir of the Levi Strauss family) claims he isn’t ready to endorse Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. His reason? Mamdani has done too much to speak out against Israeli violence.

But he’s in good company! We also watch clips from Muslims Against Mamdani and the even more powerful Hot Girls for Cuomo. Just don’t try going to hotgirlsforcuomo.com.

It’s all this, and more, on this week’s nightmare episode of Thursday Throwdown. We’re releasing this one free for everyone, because sometimes everyone needs a good headache.

Thanks for supporting independent media, subscribe to Useful Idiots and watch the full episode here: