“I'm saying that we're going to test nuclear weapons like other countries do, yes.”

Neither Russia nor China has detonated a nuclear weapon in decades, and Trump's own Energy Secretary contradicted the premise. Russia's recent tests of the Burevestnik cruise missile and Poseidon underwater drone were tests of nuclear-capable delivery vehicles, not nuclear explosions. Russia last conducted a nuclear test explosion in 1990; China in 1996. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization's global monitoring system "has successfully detected all six declared nuclear tests conducted this century," every one of them by North Korea, the last in 2017. No other nuclear power has tested since India and Pakistan in 1998. Trump's claim that "we're the only country that doesn't test" inverts reality: among the nine nuclear states, only North Korea has tested this century. Hours before the interview aired, Energy Secretary Chris Wright walked the policy back, explaining the U.S. would conduct "system tests," not nuclear detonations. The National Nuclear Security Administration already verifies the safety and reliability of U.S. warheads through subcritical experiments, without explosive testing, and the U.S. has observed its own testing moratorium since 1992.

"These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call noncritical explosions." — Chris Wright, Trump's Energy Secretary, Fox News, November 2, 2025