Members of the Republican Party have joined Democrats in questioning remarks made by United States President Donald Trump about the California cities of Los Angeles and San Diego. Much of the backlash came on Tuesday, a day after Trump told a midterm rally in Nebraska that Americans should be willing to make sacrifices to gain victory in the US-Israeli war against Iran. Those sacrifices, he implied, could include the destruction of American cities, in case of an Iranian attack.
Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon.” Trump has downplayed the impact of the war – now in its eighth month – despite polling that shows the conflict is widely unpopular in the US.
He has also repeatedly promised the war would end soon, though no lasting ceasefire has been reached so far. The fallout from his Nebraska remarks was swift. Gavin Newsom, an outspoken critic of Trump and the Democratic governor of California, said the president was “deranged”.
This is dangerous,” Newsom said in a video on the social media platform X, in which he called for Congress to rein in Trump’s behaviour. Newsom, a possible contender in the 2028 presidential race, has clashed repeatedly with Trump. Last year, the two faced off over Trump’s decision to deploy federal troops to California, as part of an effort to support a crackdown on undocumented immigration in the Los Angeles area.
In December, a federal judge ruled that the deployment had been illegal and ordered its end. Newsom, who opposed the deployment, cited that conflict in his remarks about Trump’s Nebraska rally. He added that Trump’s remarks should convince those who “didn’t think the November election mattered” to vote in the upcoming midterms.
Some from Trump’s own party have also expressed shock at his remarks. Jim Desmond, a Republican running in a competitive race for the House of Representatives near San Diego, was among those who distanced themselves from Trump’s statement. America must stand up to Iran and defend our interests, but the first responsibility of our Commander in Chief is to protect the American people and our homeland,” Desmond wrote on X.
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