Billionaire Democrat donor Tom Steyer called for a “nuclear war” to stop President Trump — then took back his comment after the interviewer called his point “sobering.”

“Maybe we can have, like, a nuclear war and then we get a real course correction,” Steyer told The Rolling Stone in an interview published Friday. He was elaborating on his belief that it is imperative for Congress to impeach Trump immediately, because the “checks and balances system” set up in the constitution isn’t working, and the only other option is to wait around for economic disaster and war.

Here’s the exchange between Steyer and Tom Dickinson:

DICKINSON: In a recent interview you suggested not impeaching Trump is normalizing him. What do you mean?

STEYER: Once you don’t speak up against lawlessness, lawlessness is permitted. …

It’s like being at a dinner party and somebody makes a racial slur and you speak up and say, ‘I think that’s really wrong, and you should take that back,’ and everyone says, ‘Ooooh, you’re making a big fuss here.’ Like, yeah, we’re making a big fuss – because something is wrong. Everyone’s acting as though it’s somehow impolite to stand up for American democracy.

DICKINSON: Speaking to [Nancy] Pelosi, she’s an institutionalist – and seems to believe that checks and balances that are less heroic than impeachment can correct the course.

Can I address that, since you just threw kerosene onto the fire? The normal checks and balances are for the Senate Judiciary and the House Judiciary Committee to investigate the president’s behavior – that is not happening. So you can believe in checks and balances as much as you want, but that is not the real world.

DICKINSON: Maybe I wasn’t clear, the idea is that Democrats, returning to power in the House, would have subpoena power. She pointed to how she dealt with George W. Bush – whom many wanted to impeach. She believes the decision to take impeachment off the table helped Democrats take the House in 2006, and paved a path to Obama and a deeper correction.

STEYER: I remember 2006. What happened is that George W. Bush, he put us in two disastrous wars and we were headed toward the biggest financial disaster since the Great Depression. So if the answer is that we need those three things to happen for a course correction, I’d prefer to move a little quicker. How about that? But I take your point. Maybe we can have, like, a nuclear war and then we get a real course correction.

DICKINSON: Wow – that’s…sobering.

STEYER: We’re trying to do what’s right. And 2006/2008 did not happen because George W. Bush didn’t get impeached, is what I’m saying. I should be a little bit more tempered: I take back that remark about nuclear war. The correction happened because the United States got screwed, and American citizens lost their houses and American citizens lost their lives – and, by the way, there was a terrible climate-related crisis, New Orleans, that the president fumbled. So that course correction was based on the suffering of American citizens. We’re trying to act expeditiously to avoid the suffering of American citizens.