Useful Idiots
Politics • Comedy
“1,000 Hiroshimas”: Chemical Engineer Explains Trump’s Nuclear Testing
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October 31, 2025
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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?

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Sanctions Are a Form of Warfare

“Sanctions are a form of war. They’re economic warfare. And they destroy people’s lives.”

Joshua Landis (https://twitter.com/joshua_landis), Sandra Mackey Chair in Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, is one of the foremost experts on Syria. This week, as Syria, along with neighbor Turkiye, grapples with the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, Professor Landis joins the Useful Idiots to explain the deadly consequences that sanctions pile on to the damage.

“America likes to talk about all its precision bombing and hitting someone with a drone to avoid collateral damage,” Landis explains. “But sanctions? It’s all about collateral damage. Very little of it is targeted.”

But if you read corporate media outlets like the New York Times or Washington Post, you’d find a much different story. Both papers this week published headlines that were hastily changed when they realized they were being a little too truthful. See if you can tell the difference:

The ...

00:01:17
"Shameful" New York Times Changes Headline to Protect Sanctions

“Sanctions are a form of war. They’re economic warfare. And they destroy people’s lives.”

Joshua Landis (https://twitter.com/joshua_landis), Sandra Mackey Chair in Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, is one of the foremost experts on Syria. This week, as Syria, along with neighbor Turkiye, grapples with the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, Professor Landis joins the Useful Idiots to explain the deadly consequences that sanctions pile on to the damage.

“America likes to talk about all its precision bombing and hitting someone with a drone to avoid collateral damage,” Landis explains. “But sanctions? It’s all about collateral damage. Very little of it is targeted.”

But if you read corporate media outlets like the New York Times or Washington Post, you’d find a much different story. Both papers this week published headlines that were hastily changed when they realized they were being a little too truthful. See if you can tell the difference:

The ...

00:01:24
Free preview: Matt Taibbi Exposes Russiagate Bots

With Matt Taibbi’s Twitter Files and Jeff Gerth’s new in-depth reporting for CJR exposing the years of lies spread by Russiagaters, bitter attacks from outed journalists are rolling in.

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Jeff Gerth has been working as a reporter for decades and published, in the very mainstream Columbia Journalism Review, a 20,000-word report on his findings, only to be called a liar and misdirecting magician in the most self-important article by Mother Jones’ David Corn (“The true media failure is that Trump got away with it and that articles like this one that you are now reading are still necessary.”) And possibly worse ...

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Emphasized "Dancing with 88

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I find myself dancing with 88,

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but a wild, liberated waltz

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and every step unearths a layer of being.

At that 90° juncture,

the universe unfolds like a secret map,

revealing uncharted realms in every fracture,

while 88 becomes the score for a cosmic ballet,

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Good to be part of the community. I think that Aaron and Katie do a brilliant job in these hellish times when such great in - depth research and reporting are essential.

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Antisemitism Czar Claims Macklemore is HIJACKING Concerts in Plot to Destroy Israel
Plus, JD Vance begs voters: “Give us another chance”

The rapper Macklemore said “Free Palestine.” It set off a Zionist meltdown.

This week, after pressure from New England Patriots owner and sex-worker employer Robert Kraft, Ed Sheeran proved himself a coward and removed Macklemore from his tour. The move led to widespread backlash against Ed Sheeran and Israeli power, but Ed can rejoice that he’s got at least one friend in his corner:

That’s right, it’s Donald Trump’s former antisemitism czar and CEO of the Adelson-funded Israeli-American Council Elan S. Carr!

In an interview, Carr gave some wild takes that certainly fit in with the Zionist stereotype of tone-deaf insanity:

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Hillary Clinton Claims Netanyahu KNEW About October 7 Before Attack
Plus, Hillary compares the DSA to neo-Nazis and Morning Joe gets in a Zionist screaming match with Donny Deutsch over Israel
A telling screenshot of today's episode
A telling screenshot from today's episode

Meet Hillary Clinton: tin-foil hatter!

During a crazy episode of Morning Joe (which had so much ridiculous content that it takes up the majority of this extended Friday Free-for-All), Hillary Clinton made the astonishing claim that Netanyahu (much like 9/11 theorists believe about George W. Bush) KNEW about the October 7 attacks BEFORE they happened and still let them occur.

Which begs the question:

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JD Vance just admitted Iran was NEVER a nuclear threat in a desperate attempt to cover for Trump’s economic meltdown
Plus, Fox News pictures Hasan Piker and Abdul El-Sayed getting married in what’s DEFINITELY NOT a closeted fantasy

After over 6 months claiming that Iran was an existential threat to the US, consistently being “only two weeks away” from nuclear capabilities, JD Vance had to suddenly admit the US was lying about its war-of-choice on Iran.

“If you look at the Iranian ability to disrupt the normal lives of Americans,” Vance says meekly during a press conference, “I think it’s quite limited. It’s not zero, but it’s quite limited.”

So how did the “terror regime” that would surely destroy the West if not stopped suddenly become a “quite limited” actor? Simple: the global economic broke down and JD’s looking for an escape hatch out of this disastrous war.

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