Beatrice Fihn's group won the Nobel Peace Prize after helping push a nuclear weapons ban through the United Nations — in the same year that President Trump threatened North Korea with a war of unprecedented destruction.
So when Fihn warned in her weekend acceptance speech that “our mutual destruction is only one impulsive tantrum away,” she didn't need to spell out whose tantrum she meant.
“You were referring to President Trump, weren't you?” Al Jazeera reporter James Bays asked her in a follow-up interview published Monday.
Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), laughed nervously with her audience at Oslo City Hall.
When she didn't answer, Bays tried again.
“Tell us what you think about the current president of the United States — the man in charge of the nuclear football, the man with the launch codes — and his temperament,” he said.
“I think it's a very dangerous situation,” Fihn responded.
Trump sometimes surprises his own aides with sudden public tirades.
He's been accused of desiring a new nuclear arms race and once told the secretary of state not to waste time negotiating with North Korea, whose leader he dubbed “Little Rocket Man.”
“Openly mocking diplomacy as an alternative — that is one of the most dangerous things, I think,” Fihn told Bays. “To see negotiated agreements, solutions to problems, peaceful solution as something negative, and that bombing, killing civilians would be better — it's absurd.”
Bays noted that Fihn would probably be critical of any U.S. president.
The country lobbied against the nuclear ban treaty her coalition helped pass through the U.N. General Assembly in July — even though no nuclear power signed the agreement, and it is still far short of being ratified by 50 countries so it can become international law.
But the reporter reminded Fihn of something she said in October, before her group won a Nobel Prize for rallying hundreds of international groups to work together on disarmament.
“You tweeted, ‘Donald Trump is a moron,’ ” Bays said.
Fihn laughed nervously again.
She had written the tweet shortly after a report leaked that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had said the same thing about Trump.
Donald Trump is a moron.
— Beatrice Fihn (@BeaFihn) October 4, 2017
Fihn had played the remark off as a joke in the past.
But in Oslo, after her work was honored by the world's foremost authority on peace, Fihn did not make the same excuse.
“To think you can use nuclear weapons is moronic,” she said. “To rely on nuclear weapons and think that provides you security is moronic.
“These weapons are threats,” she added. “They are not keeping us safe. They are keeping us unsafe.”
Talking about Trump has occasionally been a challenge for Fihn, who argues that global catastrophe is inevitable as long as any nation keeps nuclear weapons.
The United States started fighting her coalition's work during President Barack Obama's administration.
While Fihn has argued that Trump's election makes banning the weapons more urgent, she says it shouldn't confuse people into thinking a “sane” leader can be trusted not to destroy the world.
“There are no right hands for the wrong weapons,” she said at a news conference in October.
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The Nobel Peace Prize for an anti-nuclear-weapons group probably won’t please the U.S.