Russia, China have secretly tested nuclear weapons – US President • ‘I don’t know of a greater criminal in history; he is losing ground because everything he says is a lie’ – Harrison Ford rips Trump

President Donald Trump alleged on Sunday that countries including Russia and China have conducted underground nuclear tests unknown to the public and that the United States would follow suit, punchng.com reported.

“Russia’s testing, and China’s testing, but they don’t talk about it,” he told CBS’s “60 Minutes” programme in an interview released Sunday.

“I don’t want to be the only country that doesn’t test,” he said, adding North Korea and Pakistan to the list of nations allegedly testing their arsenals.

Confusion has surrounded Trump’s order that the United States begin testing, particularly if he meant conducting the country’s first nuclear explosion since 1992.

The 79-year-old Republican first made his surprise announcement by social media post on Thursday, minutes before entering a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea.

The announcement came in the wake of Russia saying it had tested a new nuclear-powered cruise missile, the Burevestnik, and a nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable underwater drone.

Asked directly if he planned for the United States to detonate a nuclear weapon for the first time in more than three decades, Trump told CBS, “I’m saying that we’re going to test nuclear weapons like other countries do, yes.”

No country other than North Korea is known to have conducted a nuclear detonation for decades.

Russia and China have not carried out such tests since 1990 and 1996, respectively.

Pressed on the topic, Trump said, “They don’t go and tell you about it.”

“As powerful as they are, this is a big world. You don’t necessarily know where they’re testing.”

“They test way underground where people don’t know exactly what’s happening with the test. You feel a little bit of a vibration,” he added.

Asked about the comments Monday, China’s foreign ministry denied conducting nuclear weapons tests.

As a “responsible nuclear-weapons state, China has always upheld a self-defence nuclear strategy and abided by its commitment to suspend nuclear testing,” spokeswoman Mao Ning said at a regular press conference in Beijing.

She added that China hopes the United States will “take concrete actions to safeguard the international nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime and maintain global strategic balance and stability”.

Trump’s energy secretary on Sunday downplayed that the United States was planning to set off a nuclear explosion.

“I think the tests we’re talking about right now are system tests. These are not nuclear explosions,” Chris Wright said in a Fox News interview.

“These are what we call ‘non-critical explosions’, so you’re testing all the other parts of a nuclear weapon to make sure they deliver the appropriate geometry and they set up the nuclear explosion,” he said.

The United States has been a signatory since 1996 to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which bans all atomic test explosions, AFP reported.

In a separate development, actor Harrison Ford on Friday blasted President Trump over his lack of policies toward combatting climate change, suggesting that the president has “whims” instead, thehill.com reported.

“It scares the s‑‑‑ out of me,” Ford told The Guardian. “The ignorance, the hubris, the lies, the perfidy. [Trump] knows better, but he’s an instrument of the status quo, and he’s making money hand over fist while the world goes to hell in a handbasket.”

“It’s unbelievable,” the actor added. “I don’t know of a greater criminal in history.”

Ford said he hoped Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” focus would not win and added that the president is “losing ground because everything he says is a lie.”

“I’m confident we can mitigate against [climate change], that we can buy time to change behaviours, to create new technologies, to concentrate more fully on implementation of those policies,” Ford continued. “But we have to develop the political will and intellectual sophistication to realise that we human beings are capable of change. We are incredibly adaptive; we are incredibly inventive. If we concentrate on a problem, we can fix it most times.

Ford, known for his roles as Han Solo in the “Star Wars” saga and as the titular star of the “Indiana Jones” films, said Trump has a disdain for wind turbines because “he has just not seen a gold one.”

The Guardian’s interview with Ford occurred prior to his appearance at the Field Museum in Chicago on Wednesday. He was presented by the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, named after the late famed biologist, with a conservation award. The two were friends before Wilson’s death in 2021.

Ford has been a frequent Trump critic for years. Last year, the actor endorsed former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

“The other guy [Trump], he demands unquestioning loyalty, says he wants revenge,” Ford said in the video for Harris and her vice presidential pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D).

Also before the election, Ford’s “Air Force One” character, President James Marshall, polled strongest among fictional presidents theoretically stacked up against Trump and Harris in a National Research Group survey. So too did President Tom Beck, played by Morgan Freeman in “Deep Impact”, and President Thomas J. Whitmore, played by Bill Pullman in “Independence Day”.