Just imagine President Donald Trump during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

"Go ahead Nikita! Bang your shoe and bomb us! We'll bomb you right back!"

Two days later, as Washington DC lays in ruins:

"Come on, everyone, I was joking! I was being sarcastic! Can't you see?"

[workinclasszero]

1. Here is what would have happened....

[geek tragedy]

2. Either that or he would have given Florida to the USSR nt

[workinclasszero]

3. Right but only if Putin cancelled his debt

to the Russian mob!

[NWCorona]

4. It's not only that. The day to day stuff terrifies me as well

[unblock]

5. there would never have been a cuban missile crisis.

because, out of his admiration for khrushchev, he would have canceled the bay of pigs invasion, never initiated the blockade of cuba, and given the soviets the green light to invade turkey.

and probably figured out a way to get him or his family to personally profit from this as well.

i think it's wrong to assume trump would actually have stood up to the soviet. when push comes to shove, bullies are only tough against the weak.

[procon]

6. We were just talking about that.

Can anyone even imagine a Trump who is ever calm or level headed and non confrontation? A Trump who would be a diligent statesman working to defuse a potentially deadly, international incident that was a prelude to WWIII?

[bellmartin]

7. I'm tempted to laugh at it, too, because it's funny, but also...

...if someone just like Trump really had been president then, I think that any of us who are alive today would literally be living in some sort of post-apocalyptic world. Of course, nuclear arsenals in those days were almost quaint when measured against today's. That's why I assume there would probably have been a fair number of survivors.

That simple question, even said in jest, is an excellent one because it's one of those stark reminders that this is so far from a typical election. Most of us here, I think, feel so strongly about politics that it's hard to resist hyperbole even in more normal elections. This time, however, there's no hyperbole needed. In human terms, this is an election in which the stakes could not be any higher.

Yow.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

8. Very well said.

And welcome.

[bellmartin]

9. Thanks for the welcome!

I used to have an account under this same name, but they mothballed me, I guess, after I became just a lurking reader, and I had to re-enroll. Even back then, though, I only had a few hundred posts. So I'm kind of a veteran, but also pretty much a newbie.

I'm very glad to be here!

[treestar]

10. typical right winger to claim to be joking

when called on a stupid statement. Right wingers don't know how to make jokes.

[Cosmocat]

11. Within the first several months after Trump took office

If the stupid prevails, I 100 percent guarantee Putin is going to do something that will put him into a corner in a really bad way.

[DCBob]

12. Any crisis.. for that matter. He would always overreact and probably send us into war..

.. and potentially cause a nuclear showdown.