President Donald Trump says many bizarre and even hateful things. But signaling he would allow Iran to nuke Los Angeles and San Diego is not one of them.
During a rally in Nebraska on Monday night, Trump “weaved” his way right into a controversy that had critics, some in the media and even a GOP congressional candidate accusing him of rhetorically conceding major population centers on the West Coast to America’s sworn enemy. And you could be forgiven for reading the president’s comments that way.
But context and recent history make clear that Trump’s crime was less indifference to the fate of Californians and more his increasingly profound incoherence.
Which, to be clear, is still a major problem for the most powerful man in the world.
First, let’s recap what Trump said.
“They can take out a city,” he said of Iran. “Let them take – let it – let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. That’s – this is a very small price to pay.”
It wouldn’t be totally out of character for this to be another Trumpian verbal excess, given his recent past. This is a president who has repeatedly spoken about withholding disaster aid from states that vote against his party, and he has demonstrated some indifference to blue states. His Energy Department recently admitted in court that it canceled clean energy grants “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state.”
The road to the 2026 midterms starts now
Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont accused Trump of saying the small price to pay was the “annihilation of two major American cities.” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut called it “such a sick, evil thing to say.” Even GOP congressional candidate Jim Desmond, who serves on the San Diego County board of supervisors, said what Trump did was “write off American cities as an acceptable price of war.” Desmond “vehemently” disagreed with it.
But that is pretty clearly not what Trump was trying to say.
For one, immediately before the above quote, he had been talking about other costs of the Iran war — apparently referring to gas prices — being that “small price to pay.”
“And again, remember — with the word — it’s just artificial, it’s a little bit high,” Trump said. “It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe.”
(You can see Trump’s full speech here.)
Trump didn’t initially say he was referring to gas prices, mind you (though he did say that later). But this is precisely how he’s been talking about them for a long time — as a “small price to pay” for preventing a nuclear Iran:
He said March 8 on Truth Social that “short term oil prices … is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace.”
On March 16, he called high gas prices “a very small thing compared to allowing them to have” nuclear weapons.
On May 5, he called high gas prices “a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon.”
He even said it in a separate appearance on Monday — an interview with a local Nebraska TV station: “I say it proudly: a relatively small price to pay for keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of a lunatic nation.”
Also, three days ago, Trump made a very similar argument to the one he made about Los Angeles and San Diego — except about Mobile, Alabama, during a rally there.
“But remember about the oil: You’re paying a price, but boy, is that a small price than what it would be if these lunatics were allowed to have a nuclear weapon and used it on Mobile, Alabama,” Trump said. “OK, not going to happen.”
At his Nebraska rally, Trump basically took that talking point and made it a whole lot more unintelligible.
He bounced around from talking about Kamala Harris and the election, to wanting total victory in Iran, to talking about gas prices being high (but without actually saying “gas prices”). When he made the comment about Iran nuking Los Angeles and San Diego, he used very unfortunate sentence construction that did sound a lot like he would “let them” — Tehran, that is — nuke the two blue state cities.
And then he returned to the gas prices — but again, in an extremely confusing way.
“But it’s gonna end very soon, and it’ll end one way or the other, and your gas and your gasoline and all of the things —” Trump said, before jumping off on a tangent about Venezuela.
It was so confusing that not only did that GOP congressional candidate seem to interpret it in the worst way; so did many in the crowd. Indeed, the ugliest part of this whole episode is that people actually cheered when Trump floated the destruction of Los Angeles and San Diego. That would seem to say something about the movement Trump has cultivated.
But while he wasn’t advocating that, his phrasing does point to a growing problem.
A president is someone you count on to be authoritative and clear, especially when talking about issues of the utmost importance like nuclear war. But Trump’s rhetoric is often anything but.
Look at any recent interview where a transcript is released. Some of Trump’s responses in his Time magazine interview last week, for example, are virtually impenetrable. (Just do a word search for “unintelligible” if you want some examples.) It often feels like he’s engaging in a lengthy bout of free association.
Trump has long spoken like this, to an extent. And by casting his meandering soliloquies as “the weave,” he’s tried to make it sound intentional, allowing his supporters to believe it’s his secret rhetorical genius.
But the “weave” is getting harder to follow — with potentially harmful consequences, too.