Donald Trump told a campaign rally in Grand Island, Nebraska on Monday night that Iran could take out Los Angeles and San Diego, waving off the destruction of two American cities as an acceptable cost of his war. The crowd cheered him for it.
“They could take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego,” Trump said, a line captured in official rally footage as the audience applauded. He called the fallout of the conflict “a small price to pay for keeping the world safe” and promised the war is “going to be over very soon.”
The president was in Nebraska campaigning ahead of the midterms while his war with Iran grinds on, a conflict in which American troops are already dying month after month. Rep. Scott Peters says at least 19 servicemembers have now died in it, including Noah Tietjens of Nebraska, the state Trump was standing in when he offered up two American cities.
California Leaders Called The Remarks Dangerous
The remarks drew swift condemnation from California leaders in both parties before the night was over. Gov. Gavin Newsom called Trump “deranged and dangerous” and pointed out that the same president who sent the National Guard and Marines into California is now telling foreign enemies they can take out its cities.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the statements were dangerous and could compromise her city’s safety. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria answered that his city “is not collateral damage.”
Even Jim Desmond, a Republican running for an open San Diego County congressional seat, said he vehemently disagreed with the president. Peters put it more bluntly, saying America knows San Diego is not a “small price to pay” for a war Trump cannot resolve.
The White House Says He Meant The Opposite
White House spokesman Steven Cheung insisted Trump was making the point that American cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran had not been stopped, adding that “Iran has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money.”
The tape does not show a man describing a hypothetical threat. It shows a president saying let them, twice, to applause.
He Spent 2016 Offering To Pay For Assaults
Monday’s remark did not come out of nowhere. It landed on top of a decade of documented statements in which Trump pointed violence at Americans, in his own voice and on his own accounts.
In February of 2016, before he was even the nominee, Trump told a Cedar Rapids crowd to “knock the crap out of” anyone preparing to throw a tomato, promising “I will pay for the legal fees.” Weeks later in Las Vegas he said of a protester being removed, “I’d like to punch him in the face,” and reminisced about the days when protesters were carried out on stretchers.
That March, a Trump supporter sucker punched a protester named Rakeem Jones at a Fayetteville, North Carolina rally. Trump responded by saying he had instructed his people to look into paying the attacker’s legal fees.
By August he was the nominee, telling a Wilmington crowd that if Hillary Clinton got to pick judges there was nothing anyone could do, before adding that “the Second Amendment people, maybe there is.” His campaign insisted he meant voting power.
The Violence Talk Followed Him Into Office
In 2018, Trump stood on a Montana stage and celebrated Rep. Greg Gianforte, who had pleaded guilty to assaulting a reporter for asking a healthcare question, telling the crowd that a politician who could body slam a journalist was his kind of guy.
When Americans filled the streets after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, the president tweeted “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” a phrase lifted from a 1967 Miami police chief notorious for brutality against Black residents. Twitter restricted the post for glorifying violence.
Privately it went further. Defense Secretary Mark Esper wrote that Trump asked about the protesters, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” Esper later repeated the account on camera during a 2022 interview about his memoir.
That September, handed the easiest question in presidential debate history, Trump declined to condemn a violent group and instead told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” The group printed the phrase on shirts within hours, and its leaders were later convicted of seditious conspiracy for their role in the January 6 attack.
January 6 Ended In Pardons
On December 19, 2020, Trump posted an open invitation online for January 6, writing “Be there, will be wild!” At the Ellipse that day he told supporters that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” and roughly 140 police officers were assaulted defending the Capitol that afternoon.
Seven Republican senators voted to convict him for it. Four years later, on the first day of his second term, Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 January 6 defendants, including rioters who beat officers with flagpoles, and he has repeatedly called them patriots.
Death Threats By Name
In September of 2023, Trump posted that Gen. Mark Milley, the nation’s most senior military officer, had committed an act “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”
Thirteen months later, at a Glendale, Arizona event with Tucker Carlson, Trump said of Rep. Liz Cheney, “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her.” The comment triggered a review by Arizona’s attorney general into whether it violated the state’s death threat laws, and his own former White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin called it “unconscionable.”
As president, he went after six members of Congress at once. After Sen. Mark Kelly and five other veterans of the military and intelligence services reminded servicemembers they can refuse illegal orders, Trump declared their reminder seditious behavior punishable by death and amplified a supporter’s post calling for them to hang.
The Military, Pointed At American Cities
In October of 2024, asked on Fox News about chaos around the election, Trump said the bigger problem was “the people from within,” calling them “radical left lunatics” who could be “very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or if really necessary by the military.” In that same interview he labeled his opponents the enemy from within.
Eleven months into his second term, the talking point became a directive. The official transcript of his remarks at Quantico shows him telling hundreds of assembled generals, “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” declaring a “war from within” while the room sat largely silent.
A decade ago the target was a single protester at an Iowa rally, and the price was legal fees he offered to cover. On Monday night the targets were Los Angeles and San Diego, and the president called them a small price to pay. Trump has never once paid that price himself. Americans have, from the officers beaten at the Capitol to the servicemembers dying in his war, and the targets keep getting bigger.
