Did you see Gen. Michael Hayden’s interview on Morning Joe this a.m.?  In it, the former director of the CIA and the NSA talks in general about nuclear command and the presidency, emphasizing that the system is built for speed, not for deliberation. Message: you had better be able to trust the judgment of the Commander in Chief. 

Here’s the interview:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMO1JvQ1gsI]

Go to the 6:00 mark in it. Harold Ford asks Gen. Hayden which of the national security experts he knows and trusts is advising Trump. Hayden’s simple answer: “No one.”

Think about it: the retired four-star general who ran the CIA and the NSA, and who surely knows everybody worth knowing in the national security field, can’t think of a single person he respects who is advising Trump.

At that, Joe Scarborough looked taken aback. Then he said, “A foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump.” He chose his words very, very carefully, plainly trying to protect the expert’s privacy. Scarborough said that three times in this one-hour briefing, Trump asked about nuclear weapons. Trump reportedly asked, “If we have them, why can’t we use them?”

If that is true, then that is reason right there not only to withhold one’s vote from Trump, but to vote against him this fall. Everything else fades in the face of the possibility of a man like that gaining control of nuclear weaponry.

Earlier in the interview, before that exchange, Hayden spoke gingerly about the constitutional crisis that would result if the military refused orders from President Trump. If what Scarborough said is true, I think it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that the military might act to prevent Trump from taking office. You know what that means.

I don’t know if what Scarborough says is true, but based on Trump’s behavior, I find it very easy to believe that Trump said this.

Here it is only early August, and Trump has us talking like this.

You have to read John Noonan’s tweetstorm about this. He once served in a nuclear missile silo, and has been through the drills. The Scarborough thing unnerved him. Excerpts:

17. Simply signaling that you’re open to using strategic weapons as a tactical solution rewrites the rule book. Russia, China, others will

— John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 2016

18. respond. Nuclear deterrence is about balance. Trump is an elephant jumping up and down on one side of the scale. So damn dangerous.

— John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 2016

19. But geopolitics aside, I can’t get my mind off the young officers on nuke alert right now. Wondering if they’ll soon answer to a madman.

— John Noonan (@noonanjo) August 3, 2016

And amid the total panic in senior GOP circles at Trump’s meltdown, Newt Gingrich basically unendorsed Trump. 

Did I mention that it’s only August 3?

Is there anything the Republican Party can do to un-nominate Trump? Asking for a friend.