[The Outsider]

In 2017, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then controlled by Republicans, held a hearing on launch-control of nuclear weapons. It was the first congressional hearing on the issue since 1976. The context, as Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy put it, was a concern that President Trump “is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic, that he might order a nuclear weapons strike that is wildly out of step with U.S. national security interests.” No Republican on the panel disputed this assessment.