U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a dinner with the leaders of the C5+1Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, in the East Room of the White House (REUTERS)
Editor's Note: This story and it's headline have been updated. A previous version presented Larry Johnson's claim without adequate verification. Independent fact-checkers at Snopes have found no evidence to support the claim. AlterNet regrets the error.
During an appearance on libertarian legal analyst Andrew Napolitano's podcast, former CIA counterterrorism official Larry Johnson alleged U.S. President Donald Trump asked "to use the nuclear codes," but was refused by officials. Others who took part in the April 18 conversation, according to Johnson, included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine.
"Citing unspecified reports of the meeting," the UK-based i Paper's Kieron Monks said in an article published on April 22 "that Johnson claimed Caine 'invoked his privilege as head of the military' to refuse Trump's request, leading to 'quite the blow-up.' He showed footage of Caine apparently 'storming out' of the building…. A White House spokesperson said the claim was false and criticized its circulation."
Snopes.com has since refuted the claim, however, and deemed it false, saying blogger Johnson “has spread false and unverified claims before,” including a 2013 claim that Secretary of State John Kerry had committed sexual assault while serving in Vietnam.
"Johnson didn't point to any specific evidence, such as news reports or photographs from reputable media outlets, to support his claims. We reached out to him for corroborating information and will update this story if we receive a response," Snopes reports.
To investigate Johnson's claims, Snopes researcher claim they searched for evidence of such an emergency meeting between Trump and Caine. A review of the official White House calendar on Roll Call, a news source covering Capitol Hill, showed no record of such a meeting. Additionally, searches ofGoogle (archived), Bing (archived) and DuckDuckGo (archived) did not yield any reporting on the event or confirmation that Caine had blocked Trump from using the nuclear codes.
In addition, Snopes reports Caine has been publicly supportive of Trump's war with Iran, saying in mid-April 2026 that the U.S. would "use force" against any ships that violated the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz — a key shipping route for oil supplies.
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