At a campaign rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, on October 5, 2026, Trump defended the cost of the war with Iran, calling high fuel prices “artificial” and “a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe.” Moments later, according to the Roll Call Factbase transcript, he said: “They can take out a city. 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, and it's gonna be over very soon.” The Los Angeles Times described the remark as “possibly in jest.”
The White House said he meant the threat a nuclear Iran would have posed. Communications director Steven Cheung wrote, “He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn't been stopped.” In the passage itself Trump did not mention nuclear weapons; he had said earlier in the speech that Iran would not have one.
California officials condemned it. Gov. Gavin Newsom: “He is deranged and dangerous.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass: “The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives.” San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria: “San Diego is not collateral damage.” A Republican, congressional candidate Jim Desmond of San Diego, said, “No American city is expendable, and no American family should ever be treated as collateral damage.”
This entry records what he said and the dispute over what he meant. It fits his earlier description of wartime fuel costs as a price worth paying (see Diesel Hits Record After Record During the Iran War. Trump Calls It 'a Very Inexpensive Price to Pay' and Weighs an Export Ban).
Update (October 6, 2026): Newsom directed California's State Threat Assessment Center “to actively monitor the situation in the event that foreign actors interpret the President's remarks as an invitation to target California,” calling the remarks “dangerous — if not treasonous.” He told The Hill that Trump is “mentally ill” and said in a statement, “TIME FOR THE 25TH!” White House spokesman Davis Ingle responded, “Gavin Newscum is the worst governor in America, and he also may be the dumbest.” A former Trump campaign aide involved in the midterms told The Hill, “While it's clear the president was joking, it's not helpful to have these comments out there with a month to go.”
Update (October 8, 2026): Trump repeated the remark at a rally in San Antonio on October 7: “you want to see trauma, you want to see problems, and I said it the other day, let them hit a missile into San Diego or Los Angeles on the way,” and then, “let them hit San Diego. Let them hit Los Angeles, and you want to see some bad things happen, you want to see a country that would be in freefall. We're not going to let that happen. We protect our cities,” according to the Factbase transcript. On October 8 he wrote on Truth Social, “All I was doing was making a comparison between paying a little more, for a short time, for Gasoline, versus the bombing of our Major Cities.”