In 1990, Donald Trump sat down for his Playboy Interview and declared, “I don’t want the Presidency.” But if he somehow ended up there, one thing would be on his mind: nuclear war. Thirty-six years later, here we are, wondering whether he actually meant it. 

Trump is now seated in the Oval Office, and while no one has explicitly mention using nuclear weapons, his escalating doomsday posts about Iran are raising concerns.

On April 7, Trump warned on Truth Social that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran doesn’t agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz—a critical oil shipping channel—by 8 p.m. that same night. According to Politico, the message came after Trump said he would launch attacks on bridges, power plants, and other civilian infrastructure if Iran missed his deadline, which could constitute a war crime. It’s not clear exactly what those attacks would entail, or that nuclear weapons are an option at all. But Trump’s language has been enough to spark genuine fear about what, exactly, he meant when he promised to wipe out a whole civilization.

It’s a good time to revisit what Trump told Playboy about nuclear war in 1990. His view: it’s a distinct and real possibility. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction—the idea that no one would ever actually launch because they know it guarantees their own annihilation—didn’t reassure him. “What bullshit,” he said.

“I’ve always thought about the issue of nuclear war; it’s a very important element in my thought process. It’s the ultimate, the ultimate catastrophe, the biggest problem this world has, and nobody’s focusing on the nuts and bolts of it,” Trump told interviewer Glenn Plaskin. “It’s a little like sickness. People don’t believe they’re going to get sick until they do. Nobody wants to talk about it. I believe the greatest of all stupidities is people’s believing it will never happen, because everybody knows how destructive it will be, so nobody uses weapons. What bullshit.”

“Too many countries have nuclear weapons; nobody knows where they’re all pointed, what button it takes to launch them. The bomb Harry Truman dropped on Hiroshima was a toy next to today’s,” Trump continued. “We have thousands of weapons pointed at us and nobody even knows if they’re going to go in the right direction. They’ve never really been tested.”

Because they’ve never been tested, Trump said we can’t be sure that a missile aimed at Moscow would really go to Moscow, or land somewhere else, somewhere unintended. How then, Plaskin asked, would a potential President Trump handle the nuclear landscape?

“He would believe very strongly in extreme military strength,” Trump said. “He wouldn’t trust anyone. He wouldn’t trust the Russians; he wouldn’t trust our allies; he’d have a huge military arsenal, perfect it, understand it.”

Find Trump’s full Playboy Interview here.