Trump's remark that Iran could 'take out' Los Angeles and San Diego draws bipartisan rebuke

Today’s Focus

President Donald Trump told supporters over the weekend that Iran, before U.S. and Israeli strikes earlier this year, had the capacity to “take out” Los Angeles or San Diego, a remark that Al Jazeera and The Hill reported drew sharp criticism from California officials and some Republicans.

The White House said Trump was describing a threat he claims to have neutralized, not inviting an attack. Deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told AP News the president was “explaining how he is preventing” strikes on American cities, not calling for them.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) said she was “horrified,” according to The Hill, and argued that a sitting president should not speak casually about U.S. cities as potential casualties of foreign war. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria (D) issued a similar statement calling the remark reckless.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) renewed his call for Cabinet officials to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office, Fox News reported. The White House rejected the demand, with spokesperson Kelly saying Newsom was “politicizing” a national security point.

CNN’s analysis described the comment as “incoherent” rather than malicious, noting Trump has repeatedly cited the June U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites as evidence he averted a wider war. Iran has denied pursuing a nuclear weapon and has not publicly threatened U.S. cities with nuclear attack.

The exchange played out as Congress continues to debate the scope of the president’s war powers following the June operation, which was carried out without a formal authorization vote. Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel mocked the remarks on air, part of a broader cultural pile-on that spread across social platforms Monday.

The Debate

Supporters argue

White House allies framed the remark as blunt plain-speaking about a danger Trump says he removed. Kelly told AP News the president was underscoring that his decision to strike Iranian nuclear facilities in June “saved American lives,” and that critics were twisting a hypothetical into a threat.

Fox News commentators argued Trump has consistently used stark language to justify the Iran operation and that voters understood the context. “He is describing the stakes, not inviting an attack,” one Fox panelist said on air, according to the network’s coverage.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a longtime hawk on Iran, defended the president’s framing in a social media post cited by Fox News, saying the Iranian regime “had every intention of building a bomb capable of reaching the United States.” Graham argued the real story was the success of the June strikes.

Supporters also pointed to Trump’s base-level popularity on national security. They said Newsom’s 25th Amendment call was a partisan overreach that would backfire, noting that no Cabinet secretary has signaled any willingness to pursue removal.

Critics argue

Bass told reporters, quoted by The Hill, that “no president should ever speak about American cities as if they were acceptable losses.” She said constituents in Los Angeles contacted her office within hours asking whether the city faced a specific threat.

Newsom, in a statement reported by Fox News, said the remark showed Trump was “unfit” and renewed his push for the 25th Amendment, a step that requires the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet. Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA), who represents part of San Diego, called the comment “grotesque” on X.

Some Republicans also distanced themselves. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told local reporters the president’s phrasing was “unfortunate” even if the underlying point about Iranian capability was defensible, according to coverage aggregated by Al Jazeera.

Civil-liberties advocates and arms-control groups argued the comment risked normalizing nuclear rhetoric. The Arms Control Association said in a statement that casual presidential references to U.S. cities being “taken out” erode deterrence norms.

What the experts say

Independent analysts say Iran’s actual capability to strike the U.S. mainland with a nuclear weapon does not match the scenario Trump described. The nonpartisan Arms Control Association assesses Iran has no deployed intercontinental ballistic missile and no tested nuclear warhead; its longest-range tested missile, the Khorramshahr, has a range of roughly 2,000 kilometers, far short of U.S. territory.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s most recent public report, cited by Reuters, found Iran had enriched uranium to 60 percent purity but had not produced weapons-grade material or assembled a device. Weapons-grade enrichment is 90 percent.

Historians of presidential rhetoric note the pattern is uncommon but not without precedent. Kathryn Olmsted, a political historian at the University of California, Davis, has written that presidents since the Cold War have generally avoided naming specific American cities in hypothetical attack scenarios, citing concerns about public panic and deterrence signaling.

RAND Corporation analyses of Iranian missile programs have consistently concluded that the near-term threat to the U.S. homeland is low, while the threat to U.S. forces and allies in the region is significant.

By the Numbers

2,000 km: approximate range of Iran’s longest-tested ballistic missile, the Khorramshahr, per the Arms Control Association. Los Angeles is roughly 12,000 km from Tehran.

60%: uranium enrichment level reported by the IAEA for Iran’s stockpile; weapons-grade is 90%, according to Reuters.

June 2025: month U.S. forces struck three Iranian nuclear sites alongside Israel, per AP News.

25th Amendment: constitutional mechanism Newsom cited, requiring the vice president plus a majority of Cabinet secretaries to declare a president unable to serve.

3.9 million: population of Los Angeles, per the U.S. Census Bureau 2024 estimate.

1.4 million: population of San Diego, per the same source.

0: number of Cabinet officials who have publicly supported invoking the 25th Amendment against Trump, according to Fox News reporting.