US President-elect Donald Trump, asked to clarify his comments about expanding US nuclear weapons capability, HAS said, “Let it be an arms race,” and that the United States would win it, MSNBC reports.

Mr Trump had alarmed non-proliferation experts on Thursday with a Twitter post that said the United States “must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes”.

The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2016

MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski spoke with Mr Trump on the phone and asked him to expand on his tweet. She said he responded: “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”

Shares of uranium producers and a nuclear fuel technology company have jumped on Mr Trump’s comments with Uranium Resources Inc, Uranium Energy Corp, Cameco Corp and Lightbridge Corp all trading higher overnight.

Mr Trump’s spokesman Sean Spicer said in several television interviews overnight that there would not be an arms race because the President-elect would ensure that other countries trying to step up their nuclear capabilities, such as Russia and China, would decide not to do so.

“He’s going to ensure that other countries get the message that he’s not going to sit back and allow that,” Spicer, who was named this week as White House spokesman for the President-elect, told NBC. “And what’s going to happen is they will come to their senses, and we will all be just fine.”

It was not clear what prompted Mr Trump’s tweet, a Republican who takes office on January 20, but it came the same day Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country needed to boost its nuclear forces.

In his year-end news conference in Moscow (which went for a marathon four hours), Mr Putin, who heaped praise on the President-elect and said relations between the US and Russia would improve, said Mr Trump’s comment was not out of line and that he did not consider the United States to be a potential aggressor.

Putin said that the US military has “more missiles, submarines and aircraft carriers, and we aren’t arguing with that.

“We are just saying that we are simply stronger than any aggressor,” he said.

Putin said he saw “nothing unusual” in Trump’s nuclear weapons pledge, adding that the statement is in line with the president-elect’s campaign promises.

Putin also used the opportunity to lambaste Mr Trump’s rivals in the Democratic Party for seeking to blame their defeat in November’s election to hacking accusations against Moscow.

“They are losing on all fronts, and are trying to find the culprits elsewhere,” he said. “They are humiliating themselves. They must know how to lose with dignity.”

Asked how he responded to President Barack Obama’s hacking accusations during a conversation shortly before the vote that Russia was involved in the hacking of Democratic Party officials’ emails, Putin said he wouldn’t divulge details of a confidential talk.

“The most important thing is the substance of the information the hackers have presented to the public opinion,” Putin said, adding that the Democrats should have apologised to Americans over the “manipulations” the emails revealed. “The current administration and the Democratic Party’s leadership are trying to shift the blame for all their failures to external factors,” Putin said. He pointed at “the gap in views of what is good and what is bad between the elites and broader masses,” adding that “the current administration has systemic problems.”

Mr Putin also said that US President-elect Donald Trump accurately read the popular mood in the United States to win the election, although “nobody except us” believed in his success.





My wonderful son, Eric, will no longer be allowed to raise money for children with cancer because of a possible conflict of interest with... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2016





my presidency. Isn't this a ridiculous shame? He loves these kids, has raised millions of dollars for them, and now must stop. Wrong answer! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2016

The US president-elect “precisely felt the mood of the society and worked in that precise paradigm, he went to the end, though nobody believed that he would win except us,” Putin said while answering a state media journalist at his annual press conference.

Asked what he thought about support among some Americans for him, Mr Putin said “I don’t put it down to me, the fact that a large part of Republican voters support the Russian president. “It means that a large part of the American people have the same idea of how the world should be, of our common dangers and problems,” he said.

“It’s good that there are people that sympathise with us in our concept of traditional values,” he said, and it may be a good starting point in “building relations” between the United States and Russia.



Meanwhile, Mr Trump is complaining about the pressure that led his son, Eric, to stop directly raising money for a foundation.

Eric Trump said he would stop soliciting donations because he worried about the perception of buying access to his father. He says his namesake foundation has raised more than $20 million for terminally ill children.

Trump tweeted overnight, “My wonderful son, Eric, will no longer be allowed to raise money for children with cancer because of a possible conflict of interest with my presidency. Isn’t this a ridiculous shame? He loves these kids, has raised millions of dollars for them, and now must stop. Wrong answer!”

Trump’s tweets followed an Associated Press report that Eric Trump’s foundation financially benefits charities connected to his family and members of his foundation’s board.