A President Talks About American Cities Being Destroyed, and the Crowd Cheers?

October 8, 2026

By Brian Hews, Owner/Publisher

Good news, Southern California: the Commander in Chief has taken a hard look at your 18 million residents, your ports, your hospitals, and your Navy fleet, and concluded you’re a “small price to pay.”

At a Nebraska campaign rally, the president said of Iran: “Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.” The crowd cheered. Somewhere in Grand Island, a man in a MAGA hat applauded the destruction of two American cities, one of which hosts the Navy he’s been told to revere. 

Consider the efficiency of it all. Most presidents spend their careers trying to protect American cities. This one found a way to outsource the opposite. Why bother sending the Marines and National Guard into Los Angeles, as he did last year, when you can just wave at Tehran and say, “Be my guest”? And if sacrificing Los Angeles wasn’t enough, he threw San Diego into the bargain. You know, the city that’s home to the very Navy helping fight his war.

San Diego: Home to the Navy Fighting His War in Iran

San Diego is home to roughly 115,000 active-duty service members and their families, some of whom served in the current Iran war. It tells you how far the bar has dropped. Apparently “support the troops” now carries an asterisk, and the asterisk is a mushroom cloud.

Southern California Builds the Military Might He Brags About

And let’s not forget what else lives in the neighborhood he’d like to see “taken out.” Southern California is one of the great aerospace corridors on Earth. From El Segundo to Hawthorne to Palmdale, and up the road to the scientists at JPL in Pasadena, this region designs, builds, and launches things the Pentagon and NASA depend on. The engineers and machinists who build the hardware for his wars are the same people he just volunteered as acceptable losses. You’d think a president who brags about American military might would be protective of the place that manufactures it. Apparently the factory floor only counts when it’s in a swing state.

L.A . County Pays More Federal Income Taxes Than 43 States

Then there’s the matter of who pays the bills. According to IRS data compiled by the Los Angeles Almanac, Los Angeles County alone sent $72.6 billion in federal income taxes to Washington in 2022, more than the entire state contribution of 43 states. The man at the podium in Grand Island was telling a crowd in a state that has historically drawn more from the federal till than it paid in that the biggest check-writers are expendable. Biting the hand that feeds you is one thing. Telling a foreign power to bite it too is a new one.

Then came the cleanup crew. The White House insists the president was “misunderstood” and was merely describing what a nuclear-armed Iran could have done to these cities. Ah, the old “he clearly said the opposite of what the words said” defense, a classic of the genre, right up there with “it was a joke” and “he was being sarcastic.” If you have to explain that the president didn’t invite a hostile nation to blow up two American cities, the sentence has already failed. A leader’s job is to speak so that “let them take out Los Angeles” can’t be mistaken for policy. This one speaks like a man reading his own set list.

Notice, too, that “small price to pay” always applies to someone else’s price. It’s never Mar-a-Lago. It’s never Palm Beach. It’s always the coastal cities he’s spent a decade sneering at. Governor Newsom called the remarks “deranged and dangerous,” and Mayor Karen Bass warned they could compromise public safety. Even a Republican running for Congress in San Diego County said he was “vehemently” opposed. When your own side is checking the exits, maybe the applause line wasn’t a winner.

Los Angeles has survived earthquakes, fires, floods, and the 405 at 5 p.m. It will survive this. But the next time someone tells you the president has your back, remember he’s the same guy who looked at your two biggest coastal cities and said, “Eh, let them nuke them.