Friday on CNN’s “New Day,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, doubled down on remarks he had made earlier in the week in Austin, TX at the South by Southwest music festival regarding the possibility of a U.S. nuclear war with Russia.

Moulton argued Russia had violated the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and criticized President Donald Trump for not acting more forcefully against Russia for the violation. That he said raised the possibility of nuclear war with Russia should Russia use nuclear weapons against U.S. allies in Europe.

“Russia has not only violated this treaty, they have also changed their doctrine,” Moulton said. “For a long time, Russia and the United States had this sort of mutual agreement, mutually assured destruction, that if they shot their weapons at us, we’d shoot our weapons at them and therefore a nuclear war was unlikely to happen. But what Russia now says is that they will quote, ‘escalate to deescalate.’ They are willing to use nuclear weapons to deescalate a conventional attack.”

“And I think that the problem here is that we don’t really have a plan to deal with that,” he continued. “If Russia starts using nukes against our allies in Europe, we may well use nukes in retaliation. What if they target American troops — like the American troops who are training right now in Poland — with a nuclear attack? What are we going to do and how quickly can that get out of control? That is why this is such a serious threat and why the Trump administration has got to take this more seriously.”

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