By Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali, David Brunnstrom and Simon Lewis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -If U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Richard Correll thought he was going to have an easy confirmation hearing on Thursday to become the commander of America’s nuclear forces, those hopes surely vanished at 9:04 p.m. the night before he was to testify.

That was when President Donald Trump shocked the world by announcing on social media that he had asked the U.S. military to “start testing our Nuclear Weapons”, saying the United States could not fall behind Russia and China.

“Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years,” Trump said.

During a roughly 90-minute hearing on Thursday morning at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Correll faced repeated questions about Trump’s comment

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