Trump Draws Backlash After Suggesting Iran Could ‘Take Out’ Los Angeles and San Diego

US President Donald Trump has drawn sharp condemnation from California officials after telling supporters at a campaign rally in Nebraska that Iran could “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego — describing such an attack as a “small price to pay,” according to Reuters and CNN.

Speaking at a midterm-election rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, on Monday, Trump defended the economic toll of the war in Iran, including higher gasoline prices, as an acceptable cost of keeping the country safe.

“It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe,” Trump told the crowd. “They can take out a city. Let ’em take out Los Angeles, let ’em take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon,” he said, according to Reuters.

Trump added that the war was nearly finished. “It’s essentially almost over with. But it’s going to end very soon, and it’s going to end one way or the other,” he said, according to Reuters.

The remarks circulated rapidly online, prompting immediate backlash from California’s leaders, who accused the president of treating millions of Americans as expendable.

Governor Gavin Newsom wrote on X: “After sending the National Guard and Marines to occupy California, Donald Trump is now saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego. He is deranged and dangerous,” according to USA Today.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement: “The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives,” according to the New York Post. She also said the remarks could “potentially compromise our safety,” according to CNN.

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria wrote that the city “is not collateral damage. We are not expendable. And we are never a ‘small price to pay.’ Keep our city out of your reckless war talk,” according to CNN. Los Angeles and San Diego are America’s second- and eighth-most populated cities, according to the New York Post.

The backlash even crossed party lines: Republican congressional candidate Jim Desmond said he “vehemently” disagreed with the president’s comments, according to CNN.

The White House rejected the criticism on Tuesday. Communications Director Steven Cheung wrote on X that the “media freakout” over Trump’s remarks was “not rooted in reality,” adding: “He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped. America is safer because of the President. Iran has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money,” according to the New York Post and USA Today.

The rally took place about a month before the November 3 midterm elections, in which Republicans are bracing for a difficult national environment. A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Monday found Trump’s approval rating at a record low of 32 per cent, with voters preferring Democrats over Republicans 44 per cent to 37 per cent on the generic congressional ballot, according to Reuters.

Why It Matters

The controversy matters less for what it reveals about military strategy — there is no suggestion Iran could strike American cities, a point USA Today explicitly notes — and more for what it reveals about how this White House talks about sacrifice in wartime.

For most of American history, presidents who asked the public to accept wartime hardship framed the costs as shared and the people as worth protecting. Here the framing was inverted: a sitting president named two specific American cities, home to millions of people, and placed them on the “price” side of the ledger. That is why the backlash landed even with a Republican candidate — it cut against the protective role Americans expect from the presidency, which is exactly the argument Bass made.

The politics are equally revealing. Los Angeles and San Diego are Democratic strongholds in a state Trump has feuded with for years, so in a Nebraska arena the joke cost him nothing — but in a national election month it hands Democrats a ready-made clip: the president suggesting an enemy wipe out blue cities. Newsom, widely seen as a possible 2028 Democratic contender, understood this instantly, tying the remarks to the administration’s earlier deployment of federal troops to California to build a single story of a president treating the state as hostile territory.

What to watch next: whether the White House repeats the “misinterpreted” defence or Trump himself doubles down in the coming rallies — repetition would signal the remarks were not a slip but a tested applause line. Watch too for polling movement in California’s battleground House districts, and for whether the “small price to pay” framing survives as the Iran war’s economic costs grow — at 32 per cent approval, the administration has little margin for more unforced controversies.

Sources

Reuters: California governor condemns Trump’s ‘let ’em take Los Angeles’ comments
CNN: Trump draws backlash after he suggests Iran could ‘take out’ Los Angeles or San Diego
USA Today: Trump sparks outrage for suggesting Iran could ‘take out’ US cities