Democrats’ claim that President Donald Trump wanted Iran to attack Los Angeles and San Diego ran into resistance from CNN’s own fact-checker. Daniel Dale rejected the characterization circulating online after Trump’s Nebraska rally. Other journalists also disputed the accusation, saying the president was defending the costs of confronting Iran and describing the danger of allowing Tehran to obtain nuclear weapons.
The dispute followed Trump’s Monday, October 5th, rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, where he discussed the war with Iran and higher gasoline prices. He argued that the economic disruption was temporary and that military action was necessary to protect the country. During that discussion, he named two California cities while describing what an Iranian nuclear weapon could threaten.
“It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe,” Trump said before invoking Los Angeles and San Diego. California Governor Gavin Newsom accused him of encouraging foreign enemies to attack those cities, calling him “deranged and dangerous.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said he had suggested a foreign government attack her city and potentially compromised its safety.
Dale challenged the description of Trump’s remarks in an October 6th post on X. “This isn’t a direct quote from Trump, and I very much don’t think it’s a correct paraphrase,” he wrote. The CNN fact-checker pointed to Trump’s repeated argument that wartime economic costs were preferable to the destruction an unchecked Iran could cause.
Dale walked through the sequence of the rally remarks. Trump first described elevated prices as temporary, contrasted that disruption with the possibility of Iran destroying a city, and returned to his argument about the cost of the war. Dale criticized the president’s rambling delivery while insisting that the surrounding remarks were relevant, writing, “but the context exists and is important.”
CNN senior reporter Aaron Blake also examined the fuller passage. He wrote that the “small price to pay” language “refers back to the costs of the war — like gas prices.” Blake rejected the interpretation that the president was assigning a value to an Iranian nuclear attack on the California cities. His post included the fuller remarks for readers to examine.
Watch Trump’s comments that prompted the controversy here:
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The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer interpreted Trump’s point as a warning that the cities would face a nuclear threat if the United States hadn’t acted against Iran. Former Trump staffer Sarah Matthews, who later became a Biden voter, also rejected the claim that he was targeting Democratic cities. “I don’t think Trump was suggesting letting Iran to attack ‘blue cities,’” Matthews wrote.
Among the accounts circulating the clip was Headquarters, which uses the handle @HQNewsNow and previously operated as KamalaHQ and BidenHQ. The criticism also reached Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who accused Trump of treating Americans as collateral damage. California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra invoked the residents of Los Angeles and San Diego counties in condemning the president’s remarks.
White House communications director Steven Cheung responded Tuesday by describing the backlash as a “media freakout” that was “not rooted in reality.” He said the administration’s actions had protected American cities against the danger Trump was discussing. “He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped,” Cheung wrote.
The White House’s rapid response account issued its own rebuttal on X. It said the United States was fighting to prevent Iran from acquiring the ability to destroy Los Angeles and San Diego with a nuclear weapon. Addressing the accusation that Trump had encouraged an attack, the account opened its response with: “No, he didn’t, you buffoons.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.