Fox News Reporter Asks Trump if He’s About to ‘Trigger an Arms Race in Space’ with ‘Golden Dome’ Project

HEINRICH: “Mr. President, when you first announced this idea, critics said it would be prohibitively expensive, potentially ineffective, and could trigger an arms race in space. What do you say to those critics about that?”

Trump: “Well, they’re wrong. It’s about as close to perfect as you can have in terms of real production. I told you, Canada wants to be a part of it, which would be, you know, fairly small expansion, but we’ll work with them on pricing, we’ll be dealing with them on pricing, they know about it very much. They’ve asked to be a part of it, actually. They’ve asked us to be a part of it. I think it’s something that is great, if you can afford to do it. We can afford to do it. You know, we took in $5.1 trillion in the last four days in the Middle East. And when you think about it, that’s — this is a tiny fraction of that. But we make it all here. We’re going to make it all here. We have — when — I will tell you, an adversary told me, a very big adversary told me the most brilliant people in the world are Silicon Valley, said we cannot duplicate them. We can’t. This was somebody that I won’t tell you who it is, but you’d be amazed. We have the most brilliant minds in the world doing this kind of thing. The equipment, the space, the computers, everything. But he said that, we just can’t duplicate what you have there in Silicon Valley. We never have been able to. This is a very strong group of people and very strong minds. But they can’t. So we have things that nobody else can have. You see what we’ve done helping Israel with that. You probably wouldn’t have an Israel. They launched probably 500 missiles altogether, and I think one half of a missile got through, and that was only falling to the ground, scrap metal. It’s pretty amazing. And this is a — this is, in terms of technology, far advanced from that system.”

HEINRICH: “And just one follow up on the adversaries, have you addressed Russia’s ventures in space with a space-based nuclear weapon and told Putin to stop in your conversations with him?”

Trump: “We haven’t discussed it, but at the right time we will, yeah.”