Trump Suggested Iran Could 'Take Out' L.A. A San Diego Republican Objected.

GOP House candidate Jim Desmond, a Navy veteran, broke with Trump, who called such an attack 'a very small price to pay.'

President Trump told a Nebraska rally on Monday that if Iran took out Los Angeles and San Diego, it'd be a small price to pay. The crowd cheered, CBS News Los Angeles reported.

Within hours, the pushback was coming from his own party, too. Jim Desmond, a Republican and Navy veteran running for Congress in San Diego, posted on X that he strongly disagreed with the president. "As a Navy veteran, I served to protect Americans, not write off American cities as an acceptable price of war," Desmond wrote, according to NBC 7 San Diego.

Trump was in Grand Island, Neb., to campaign for Sen. Pete Ricketts and Gov. Jim Pillen ahead of the November midterms, ABC News reported. He'd been telling the crowd he wanted "a tremendous victory" in November when he turned to the war with Iran. "It's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe," he said, in remarks quoted by NBC 7 San Diego. "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."

Neither city is an abstraction to the Pentagon. Los Angeles, the country's second-largest city, houses the headquarters of the Space Force's Space Systems Command, CBS News Los Angeles noted. Naval Base San Diego is the homeport of the Navy's Pacific Fleet, and some 70,000 service members and civilians live and work at nearby Camp Pendleton.

California Democrats answered on X before Monday night was over. Gov. Gavin Newsom pointed to the National Guard troops and Marines Trump had already sent into the state and called the president "deranged and dangerous." Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass wrote that a president's job is to protect the country, not to threaten it or cheer on attacks against Americans. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria put it shortest: "San Diego is not collateral damage."

Sen. Alex Padilla went after the setting. He wrote that at least 19 U.S. servicemembers have died in what he called Trump's unauthorized war with Iran, among them Noah Tietjens of Nebraska, the state where the president was standing when he said it.

Desmond, for his part, didn't break with the war. In the same post, he wrote that America has to stand up to Iran, and that a commander in chief's first job is protecting Americans at home. That wasn't enough for Marni von Wilpert, a San Diego City Council member who's also running for Congress. She used her statement to call it indefensible that Desmond still supports the war and still takes Trump's backing and money, and she tied the remark to the gas pump, where she said Californians already pay for the war every time they fill up.

Rep. Scott Peters, a San Diego Democrat, wrote that his city is home to 115,000 active-duty servicemembers and their families. He wrote that the city is still waiting on sailors and Marines who've been stuck aboard the USS Lincoln for months, a delay he blamed on the war. They're expected home this month.

Source: ktla.com.

Source: CBS News, retrieved October 6, 2026. Other sources: nbcsandiego.com, abcnews.com.