When he is sworn in on Wednesday, President-elect Joe Biden will get the “football” core – a strangely shaped 45-pound briefcase that is always on the president’s side to control and control the country’s massive nuclear arsenal.
A military assistant wearing the ‘football’ stays physically close to the president, ready to perform the well-rehearsed choreography of command and control.
Smithsonian Magazine reports that it is officially called the ‘president’s emergency bag’, and it is built around a ‘solid aluminum frame, encased in black leather’. But, the magazine said, unlike in the movies, it does not have a big red button to launch a nuclear war.
However, for the first time, outgoing President Donald Trump will not hand over the black leather bag to the incoming president. The handover usually takes place during the inauguration ceremony at the American Capitol.
Because Trump plans to be in Florida when Biden is sworn in, the handover will happen differently. This will be the first time in the core period that a sitting president has not attended the inauguration of his successor.
A U.S. official has said that a military assistant will accompany Trump to Florida with one of the soccer tracks and that Trump will retain sole authority to launch a nuclear strike until 11:59:59 a.m. Wednesday. The fact that Trump is physically from Washington will not affect his launching authority or access to football until noon. (There are several soccer balls that a president can use to start a military strike while traveling.)
Another military assistant with a second nuclear football will hand over authority to Biden as soon as he is sworn in, the official said, and the military assistant with Trump will bring football back to Washington.
The football for Biden will be available to him on Wednesday afternoon.
The retired manager of the Navy, James Stavridis, a contributor to NBC News, said that football with Biden would be ‘activated’ in the afternoon, in the sense that the US strategic command would go to the one if anything happened. happens which means it was needed.
‘Just before he becomes president, there is a football in his area [that] is activated, ”Stavridis said of Biden.
The White House declined to comment and said it was a security issue.
In a 2013 documentary by the Discovery Channel, former Vice President Dick Cheney describes the moment as it usually unfolds.
“The passing of the football takes place around noon. Nobody says a word, but I knew what to look for,” he said. ‘So you have the ceremony from the front, but … kind of behind one of the big pillars in front of it, these two guys are standing there in their uniform, and at the right moment he reaches out to hand it over. to the newly designated military assistant. And he accepts it from that moment on. The new president is the man in charge of our core assets. ‘
There have been unusual events surrounding football among the various presidents, said presidential historian Michael Beschloss, a contributor to NBC News.
The location of football ‘was a problem when JFK was killed in Dallas,’ “he said. “Reagan’s nuclear code card was accidentally thrown out of the hospital after he was shot in 1981. Clinton lost his nuclear code card for several months in 2000.”
