Donald Trump told a rally crowd in Nebraska on Monday night to let Iran “take out Los Angeles,” naming the city and San Diego while arguing that Americans should accept higher prices caused by the war with Iran.
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Trump was in Grand Island to campaign for Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts, who is fighting off independent challenger Dan Osborn ahead of the November midterms. While explaining why prices have climbed since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran in late February, Trump described the increases as temporary.
“It’s just artificial. It’s a little bit high,” Trump said. “It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe.”
Then he went further. “They can take out a city,” Trump said. “Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay.”
Trump did not clarify what he meant. The remark could be read as him describing what Iran might do if left unchecked, but he did not say that, and nobody from the White House had explained the comment as of Monday night. What is on tape is the sitting leader of the country naming two American cities, home to more than five million people combined, in the same breath as “small price to pay.”
The threat he described does not currently exist. Iran does not have missiles that can reach the United States. A report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s military intelligence arm, concluded last year that Iran had no ballistic missiles capable of hitting American soil and that building a meaningful number of long range missiles could take as long as a decade. Iran’s longest range missiles top out at roughly 2,000 miles, while the continental United States sits around 6,000 miles away. Trump made a similar claim in his State of the Union address in February, saying Iran was building missiles that would “soon reach the United States,” and sources familiar with U.S. intelligence reports told reporters at the time that the claim was not backed by the intelligence.
The comments came as the cost of the war lands on everyday Americans. Diesel prices and inflation tied to the conflict have become a major concern for voters, including farmers in Nebraska, where diesel runs the tractors and the trucks that move crops to market. Trump told the crowd the war is “essentially almost over” and predicted it would end “one way or the other.”
He also spent part of the speech shifting blame for fuel prices, pointing to Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries and complaining that “blue states are closing up refineries.” California, home to both cities he named, is one of those states.
Elsewhere in the speech, Trump told the crowd, “We’re kicking Iran’s [expletive],” and claimed people tell him he is better than George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
Trump won Nebraska by more than 20 points in 2024, but Republicans are now spending money to defend seats in states that have long been safe for them. Monday’s rally was meant to help Ricketts close that gap. Instead, the line that left Grand Island was about Los Angeles.
