and the guy he's telling to turn the key is Leo from The West Wing.

This is dependant entirely on the president asking "what would be legal?". Entirely.

No it isn't. It is dependent on the general not obeying an illegal order

I just tweeted this as my own. Sue me.

So you contend that the decision to launch is the general's and not the president's? What is an illegal order? What is legal? How long do you think that debate happens in a real launch situation?

There are a few minutes to launch in a counterstrike to mitigate damage of more launches. Yeah, maybe they stop him from launching at Australia or a sanctuary city, but in a questionable situation there is no way in hell they are going to usurp his authority and it will err on the side of following the order.

Listen to the podcast. There is an interesting story about what happened to the career of an officer who was a key holder and simply asked a question about illegal orders.

In this scenario he has to talk to launch, but then he has to listen to not launch.

He sounds like he landed on his feet.

Here's part of what I wrote:
The fact is that the media is talking as much already about porn stars as about his racism and xenophobia. By "his people" I just mean republicans, not necessarily his press secretary. There are lots of them who want to push the xenophobic/racist anti-immigration agenda, and his stupidity is making it harder for them - they view him as a negotiating piece - he pushes for a wall, expels 200,000 people here and there - they can look like moderates pushing a still extremist agenda. They want the word "****hole" out of the media.

As for the sex thing - I really don't care about his sex life, Obama's sex life, etc. as long as it is consensual, not an abuse of power, etc. I have no use for Bill Clinton, for example, because sex with your intern is sexual harassment by almost any institutional standard. While I have no doubt that Trump is a similar piece of **** to women, this particular story is mostly in the media - for what we know now - because of the word "porn" and the fact that 130K leads one to speculate that there is something more behind it (that's a lot of cash - most folks would keep quiet for a lot less). But the US is ridiculously puritanical, and any mention of sex gets people going. If he's Strauss Kahn or John Edwards, fine, but what has been reported here so far is not as bothersome as the tape with Billy Bush, and all of it is a distraction from him being a goddamn nazi racist and doing horrible things with tremendous consequences like trying to expel hundreds of thousands of people ...

It's a question of proportionality. With Trump there's so much wrong, there's no need to debate some aspect of what in the end is mostly his personal life. Far more important is what he is doing and trying to do qua president, that someone with so little respect for people is able to move his insane agenda - and all the sycophants and republicans supporting him.

I have no respect for anyone that calls themselves a republican. Not much for the democrats either, but it's not the same level of hypocriticial self-serving self-consciously cynical lying people-hating racist-xenophobic anti-woman gay-hating poor-criminalizing middle-class-destroying hate masquerading as politics. Trump is only worse than the maintream Republican party because he's an idiot fat-assed clown.

If it's a counterstrike situation then the order to launch is not illegal!

An unprovoked first strike would be illegal if it isn't to preempt a direct threat. Basically, that rebel russian dude fueling his missiles in Crimson Tide.

And if Trump wakes up in the middle of the night and wants to nuke North Korea when there's no threat? You're right, the conversation there would probably be pretty short.

Trump: I wanna nuke
SAC: Uh, why?
Trump: FIRE AND FURY
NORAD: Uh, the big board's clear sir
Trump: NUKE
SAC: sir...

Then later that day Trump gets 25th amendemented

Well done, good sir.

And you, good sir.

Citation on the law stating POTUS can't launch based on a phone alert?

The system is designed to launch when the POTUS wants to and fast. This has been gone over by so many security experts at this point that your position here is Trumpkin and not just contrarian.

How is an unprovoked strike illegal? Are you talking about the war powers act??? If so, lolololol.

Trump is the who decides if there's an imminent threat Keeed. Just Donald Trump. Not NORAD. Not SAC. Not the generals, half of whom want to first strike NK and Iran anyway.

It's a war crime and only Congress has the authority to declare war.

Dude. The counterstrike/preemptive strike scenario is why there will not be a long discussion about the legality of a launch unless it is stupidly obvious like your dip**** scenario. Great. We are safe if the president goes completely off the rails. There are a ton of scenarios that are less definitive than that, like say....mixed reports about a launch or even a plan to launch on Hawaii.

Right and if Trump decides there is an imminent threat because his phone tells him so while the NORAD radars are clear, we aren't going to nuke anything. It's laughable. Like the general in charge of Strategic Forces said in the article I linked to, they aren't morons.

Right, I'm responding to folks who think that today's mistaken emergency broadcast put us at risk for a mistaken nuclear launch. People who think that something Trump sees on his phone could plausibly trigger a nuclear launch.

Radiolab is just unlistenable for me because of all the irritating sounds effects and the annoying patter of the hosts, who just constantly interrupt their guests to repeat exactly what was just said.

*excited young NPR voice*

exactly what was just said?

You also seemed to imply there is a more robust layer between the president and launch than there is. It turns out it was a button slip, but it could have been a bad report or conflicting information that was wrong that set off the series of events. The point is we are expecting a ****ing moron to err on the side of reason in the face of imperfect information and human error.

Actually, there are more people with their finger on "the button" than you might think. It's sort of an open secret that presidents have delegated the authority to use nukes to various people in the military.

Radio lab is unlistenable for all of those reasons, and also the stupid round table editing where they take turns saying sentences. It sucks because as noted the content is compelling.

The new generation of public radio hosts are insufferable, the older ones were merely occasionally annoying.

Shakes fist at cloud.

Don't know the details but I remember being told in civ class in hs that every nuclear sub commander could launch independently.

https://soundcloud.com/lefthandedradio/sets/what-if

I was responding only to the lunatic president out of the blue deciding to nuke narrative. If the president and his staff make a decision to nuke North Korea preemptively, and there's like powerpoints and meetings and ****, yeah then that would probably get carried out. But the president can't just wake up in middle of the night and decide to nuke something. It's absurd on its face.