WE PROTECT OUR CITIES
You can protect a city. Or you can treat it like a prop in a midterm speech. Donald Trump tried both in one week.
On October 5 in Grand Island, Nebraska, while talking about the Iran war and high prices, he said, per Snopes and the Guardian: “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.”
The crowd applauded. California did not.
The cleanup tour
Within a day, White House communications director Steven Cheung was on X saying Trump was “clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped,” and calling the backlash a “media freakout,” per Snopes, the Guardian, and Newsweek.
On October 8, Trump posted on Truth Social that he meant “a temporary increase in the price of Gasoline is a small price to pay for Iran not having a Nuclear Weapon” and that the “big price” would be if Iran actually bombed San Diego or Los Angeles. Snopes printed the post in full.
That same day, campaigning in San Antonio for Senate candidate Ken Paxton, he revisited the line, per ABC7 and Newsweek:
“I said it the other day. ‘Let them hit a missile into San Diego or Los Angeles on the way. Let them hit.’ You want to see a horror show?”
Then the new chorus: “We protect our cities. We protect our country. We’re not letting that happen.”
Same week. Same war. Same midterms. Different costume.
California heard a target
Gavin Newsom called the Nebraska remarks “deranged and dangerous,” and his press office said the president was “advocating for an attack on 10+ million U.S. residents in two of America’s largest cities,” per the Guardian and Newsweek. Newsom asked California’s State Threat Assessment Center to “actively monitor” in case foreign actors treated the lines as an invitation, Newsweek reported. After that request, Newsweek noted, there was no publicly reported change to California’s formal threat level.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the president’s statements were “dangerous and could potentially compromise our safety,” and that a president’s job is “to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives,” per Newsweek.
Karen Bass, official portrait as mayor of Los Angeles. She called Trump’s LA remarks dangerous and a threat to city safety. Credit: City of Los Angeles, public domain.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria put it shorter: “San Diego is not collateral damage. We are not expendable. And we are never a ‘small price to pay.’” San Diego is also home to critical U.S. military infrastructure, the Guardian noted.
Todd Gloria, official portrait as mayor of San Diego. He rejected the idea that his city is “collateral damage.” Credit: City of San Diego, public domain.
When the mayors of your second- and eighth-largest cities have to remind you they are not expendable, the speechwriters have left the building.
The physics problem
Here is the part the rallies skip. Experts such as Sam Lair of the Foreign Policy Research Institute have told Newsweek that Iran does not have missiles capable of striking Los Angeles or San Diego. Iranian officials have publicly acknowledged developing missiles with a maximum range of about 1,200 miles — well short of the roughly 5,600 miles needed to reach the continental United States, and more than 7,500 miles from Iran to those two cities, per Newsweek. The Guardian likewise noted that U.S. defense officials have previously said Iran currently lacks the capability to launch a direct missile attack on the U.S. mainland.
So the Nebraska line was not a weather report. It was wartime politics with California as the chalkboard.
Los Angeles City Hall. Trump named the city in a Nebraska war digression, then told Texas he protects American cities. Credit: Julius Shulman / Library of Congress, public domain.
A city hall is not a bargaining chip. Treat it like one, and do not be shocked when the mayors answer.
The red costume: cities as props
If you came up on “America First” and “protect our own,” this section is for you.
Trump spent October 5 floating Los Angeles and San Diego in a sentence that sounded, to millions of ears, like a bargain with the enemy. The White House then insisted everyone had misheard a comparison about gasoline. Then Trump went to Texas and restaged the “let them hit” thought experiment before landing on “We protect our cities.”
That is not strategy. That is product testing.
We have been watching this war’s price tag already. In $6.50 Diesel, Don’t Hit Diesel, and Temporary Exception: Oil, the same conflict showed up in your tank and your grocery bill. Snopes notes an October AP-NORC poll finding only 28% of Americans approve of how Trump is handling Iran, as gas and grocery costs keep climbing.
So the “small price” was never theoretical. You have been paying it. The cities just got drafted into the slogan.
Constitutional conservatives used to snarl when presidents talked about American cities as if they were bargaining chips. Now some of the same accounts are explaining that “let ‘em take out San Diego” was actually a love letter to San Diego. If your defense of the president requires a translator, the president needed a better sentence.
The blue costume: selective city love
Democrats, before you get comfortable.
You are right that a president should not sound like he is auctioning coastal metro areas on a rally stage. You are also late to the idea that presidential words about war and American lives can be reckless.
For years, blue-city mayors and progressive media treated “protect our cities” as a slogan aimed at police budgets, federal troops, and whichever Republican was in the news cycle — until the same cities needed federal help for crime, fentanyl, or homelessness and the script flipped again. Newsom’s fusion-center monitoring request after a speech is theater that photographs well. It does not undo years of selective toughness: tough on Trump’s mouth, softer when Democratic presidents sold endless overseas campaigns as someone else’s “small price.”
And spare us the sudden discovery that wartime rhetoric can endanger people. Obama-era drone wars and Biden-era force posture debates killed and displaced people who never got a Truth Social clarification. California leaders who now say no American city is expendable were quieter when the expendable ZIP codes were overseas. City love that only activates when the named cities vote blue is not principle. It is demographics with a press release.
Both costumes
The Guardian called the Nebraska stretch part of a rambling, nearly hour-and-a-half speech. Snopes called it an unscripted, tangential portion. Either description is fatal to the “everybody knew what I meant” defense. If everybody knew, you would not need a Truth Social essay and a Texas do-over.
Fair is fair. Ending a nuclear threat to American cities is a legitimate presidential argument. Cheung’s “cities would have been threatened” line is the version Trump should have said on October 5. The San Antonio closer — “We protect our cities” — is the version a commander-in-chief is supposed to lead with, not chase three days later.
But the scale of the whiplash is the story. The red costume is wartime swagger that names Los Angeles and San Diego like chips, then midterms-laundry the quote into gasoline math and a protect-our-cities chyron. The blue costume is a party that hears “take out” as treason when it is Trump, and as complexity when it is their own forever-war alumni.
You do not need a costume for this one. You need a president who can talk about protecting American cities without first putting them on a hypothetical target list. Call your member of Congress and ask which version of the speech they heard — the Nebraska one, or the San Antonio cleanup.
Receipts
- Snopes, October 6, 2026 (updated October 8). Nebraska rally quote, Cheung statement, Truth Social gasoline clarification, Newsom/Bass/Gloria reactions, AP-NORC Iran approval figure.
- The Guardian, October 6, 2026. Rally context, applause note, Newsom/Bass/Gloria quotes, Cheung response, defense-official note on Iran’s current mainland-strike capability, San Diego military infrastructure.
- ABC7, October 8, 2026. San Antonio “let them hit” revisit and “We protect our cities” line.
- Newsweek, October 8, 2026. San Antonio remarks, Bass/Gloria/Newsom quotes, STAC monitoring request, FPRI Sam Lair range analysis (1,200 vs. 5,600+ miles).
- Hypocrisy Democracy, $6.50 Diesel, Don’t Hit Diesel, and Temporary Exception: Oil. Prior coverage of the Iran war’s fuel and price politics.
Upgrade
Free readers see this section as Upgrade to paid. Paid readers pick 1 meme sticker from the Etsy shop HypocrisyDemocracy, plus quarterly sticker packs, discounts and bonus content, and 1 free business strategy & IT consultation a year with Anytech Solutions LLC.
If you haven’t subscribed, now’s a good time. Everything here stays free, always. But pieces like this take days of research, writing, and fact checking, and if you’d like to support that work, paid subscriptions are there. Thank you for your support!
Thanks for reading, sharing, and commenting.
Subscribe. Donate. hypocrisydemocracy.net. Hypocrisydemocracy@pm.me.
Originally published on Substack.