A firestorm of condemnation has erupted from California’s top political leaders after former President Donald Trump made incendiary remarks about potential Iranian attacks on two major Southern California cities during a midterms election rally in Nebraska.
During the rally, Trump addressed rising fuel prices tied to the ongoing US-linked conflict with Iran, claiming that if Tehran were to strike Los Angeles or San Diego, it would amount to a “small price to pay for keeping the world safe.” He also told the crowd that the war with Iran was nearly over, drawing cheers from a portion of the audience after he made the comments about the two California population centers.
Both cities are key hubs for critical US military infrastructure. San Diego, the nation’s eighth-largest city sitting just 17 miles from the Mexican border, hosts Naval Base San Diego — the primary home port of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet — as well as Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the West Coast’s main training facility for Navy SEALs, and Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, which employs more than 70,000 service members and civilian workers. Roughly 120 miles north of San Diego, Los Angeles, America’s second most populous city, is home to the US Space Force’s Space Systems Command headquarters and Los Angeles Air Force Base.
California Governor Gavin Newsom quickly blasted Trump’s comments, calling the sitting president “deranged and dangerous.” On his official X account, Newsom shared a Los Angeles Times report on the remarks and labeled them “disgusting and disqualifying.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass also pushed back sharply, arguing that the core responsibility of a US president is to protect all American communities, not to endanger them by normalizing attacks that would kill American citizens.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria echoed that criticism in a post on X, stressing that his city should never be treated as acceptable collateral damage, and demanded that Trump remove Southern California from his “reckless war talk.” As of Monday, Trump has not issued any public response to the backlash from California’s leadership.
This high-profile clash is far from the first public conflict between Trump and Newsom, who is widely speculated to be a potential Democratic presidential candidate in the 2028 election. The two have a long history of public feuding: Last year, Trump labeled Newsom incompetent after anti-immigration enforcement protests in Los Angeles turned violent, while Newsom accused Trump of “brazen abuse of power” when the president deployed active-duty military personnel to secure federal buildings during the unrest. Earlier this year, Trump drew widespread condemnation from dyslexia advocacy groups after he mocked Newsom’s dyslexia, claiming that a person with a learning disability was unfit to serve as president. The two most recently interacted in January, when Trump visited California to survey damage from devastating wildfires that swept across the state.