“Let Them Take Out Los Angeles.”
The President of the United States said that out loud. On purpose. To applause. Here’s why you don’t get to shrug this one off.
The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #1,047: Tuesday, October 6th, 2026.
Let me be blunt.
On Monday night in Grand Island, Nebraska, Donald Trump stood in front of a cheering crowd, mid-war, with American bombers being scrambled out of a British airbase over an Iranian drone threat, and said this:
“They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay.”
Read it again. Slowly.
That’s not a gaffe. That’s not a hot mic. That’s a sitting commander in chief naming two American cities, home to more than ten million people, and pricing them out like a line item.
A small price to pay.
For what? For his war. For his gas prices. For his “tremendous victory” that he needs because, in his own words, it “verifies all the things we did.”
Your city. His ego. Small price.
The spin started before the rally ended
Here’s what happened next, and I want you to watch the mechanism, because it’s the same one every time.
The White House didn’t say he misspoke. They never say he misspoke. Communications director Steven Cheung said Trump was “clearly stating” that cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped. An administration account on X said he meant the U.S. is fighting to stop Iran from being able to take out LA and San Diego.
So the official position is: he said the opposite of what he said, and you’re the problem for hearing the words.
Think about what they’re asking you to believe. That the man famous for saying exactly what he means, the man his own fans love because he “tells it like it is,” suddenly developed a tragic grammar disability in the one sentence where he endorsed the destruction of two American cities.
And…notice what they didn’t do. Nobody put him in front of a camera to say, “I would never accept the loss of a single American city. I chose my words poorly.” That’s a two-sentence fix. It would have taken ninety seconds.
They didn’t do it…because he doesn’t do it. Because walking it back would mean admitting the crowd heard it right.
The crowd applauded. Not at the “stopping Iran” part. At the “let them take out Los Angeles” part.
“Context” is not a get-out-of-jail-free card
Some fact-checkers have decided this is a “you have to understand rally-speak” situation.
BULLSHIT. No. I don’t.
I don’t have to be fluent in Trump to understand English. “Let them” is a verb of permission. “Small price to pay” is a verb of acceptance. He connected them to the names of two cities on the same breath.
And…here’s the part the context crowd keeps skipping: even their most charitable reading is disqualifying. If he was describing a hypothetical, he was casually floating the obliteration of Los Angeles as a rhetorical flourish to sell a war that is bleeding this country dry at the pump.
That’s not better. That’s a president…who thinks the deaths of millions of Americans are a good applause line.
There is no version of this sentence that a serious person says.
Who he was talking about
Los Angeles has one of the largest Iranian diaspora communities on earth.
People who fled the regime. People whose families are still there. People who have spent decades praying for exactly the kind of freedom this president claims to be fighting for.
He told a crowd in Nebraska to let that city burn.
He sent the National Guard and the Marines into California last year over protests. Now…he’s telling foreign enemies…which zip codes to aim at.
Governor Newsom called him “deranged and dangerous.” Mayor Karen Bass said his statements “could potentially compromise our safety.” San Diego’s mayor, Todd Gloria… said his city “is not collateral damage.”
Those aren’t partisan talking points. Those are people responsible for millions of lives… responding to the one man on earth…who is supposed to be responsible for all of ours.
The real tell
Six American soldiers died in Kuwait in March in a drone strike their own comrades say commanders were warned about.
The same day…Trump was joking about Los Angeles…the Pentagon was moving B-1 bombers out of RAF Fairford because Iran was threatening the base.
This war is not a hypothetical. The threat is not a rhetorical device. And…the man running it…just told you how much your city is worth to him.
“Small price.”
What you do with this
You don’t let it get buried under tomorrow’s outrage.
You don’t let the “he didn’t mean it” crowd exhaust you into silence. You don’t accept “misunderstood” from people who refuse to say “misspoke.”
You remember it. You say it out loud at every dinner table…every Zoom…every town hall between now and November.
The President of the United States said “let them take out Los Angeles,” and his own staff would rather blame your ears than correct his mouth.
Share this. Forward it. Pin it. Comment.
He said it. We heard it. We’re not forgetting it.
And here’s a bonus...an extension of the core of the article...because we need to discuss it.
Because the Los Angeles line didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s the loudest note in a pattern that’s been getting louder for a year. Ten questions, ten straight answers.
1. Is “let them take out Los Angeles” an outlier, or is it the pattern?
It’s the pattern, said plainly. Last year he told the National Guard in Los Angeles, “IF THEY SPIT, WE WILL HIT,” and promised protesters would be “hit harder than they have ever been hit before.”
He called the city’s unrest “Gavin Newscum inspired riots.” The move from we will hit Angelenos to let Iran hit Angelenos isn’t a leap. It’s one more step down the same staircase.
2. Why does he keep singling out California?
Because it’s the biggest state that won’t bend to him…and he has decided that makes it foreign territory.
He sent the Guard and the Marines there over his own immigration raids. He pulled federal money from Maryland’s and California’s offshore wind projects out of spite for “fantasy wind.” And…now he names its two largest southern cities as acceptable losses. Forty million Americans live there. He talks about them like they’re on the other side of a border.
3. Who actually paid the “small price” he keeps talking about?
Six soldiers who died at Port Shuaiba, Kuwait on March 1. Their comrades say commanders were warned the facility was wide open to a drone strike and did nothing.
The wounded describe red tape and a botched evacuation plan. The Pentagon says the care was “appropriate.” Those are the people behind the phrase “small price to pay.” He didn’t name them in Nebraska. He named Los Angeles.
4. He said the economic pain is “artificial.” What does that word tell you?
That he’s not living in your economy. Gas prices are a line in his speech…not a line in his budget. When a president calls the hit to your paycheck “artificial” while his war pushes it up…he’s telling you your hardship isn’t real to him. That’s the same disregard…just in dollars…instead of cities.
5. What about his own supporters? Does the contempt stop at the blue states?
No. He spent years telling his base that mail-in voting was fraud. On Saturday and again Monday he told them to vote by mail, because “a lot of people want to vote by mail.” He didn’t apologize for lying to them for years. He just needed their ballots now. The loyalty runs one direction…and it always has.
6. He’s threatening allies too. How does that connect to Americans?
Directly. Reporting this year has him threatening tariffs on NATO allies over Greenland…and reportedly saying he no longer felt obligated to think “purely of peace” because he didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize.
A man who treats the world’s peace…as a personal grievance…will treat your city as a bargaining chip. The LA line is what that mindset sounds like when it slips.
7. Is anyone inside the government allowed to tell the public what’s happening?
Less every month. This week a federal magistrate sided with his Justice Department on a subpoena targeting a freelance reporter who wrote about a secret mission gone wrong.
The White House banned Politico from Air Force One…and when they tried to find another outlet to fill the seat…every one of them refused. He’s not just disregarding citizens. He’s working to make sure they can’t see what he’s doing to them.
8. What was he going to do with your tax dollars?
Run pro-Trump TV ads with them. He only backed off this week and shifted the cost to his super PAC after what he called “upset from the Radical Left.”
Read that carefully. He didn’t say it was wrong. He said people got upset. He still thinks federally funded “positive promotion” of himself is normal. He’s just doing it with other money for now.
9. The White House says he was “misunderstood.” Why doesn’t that defense work?
Because they’ve used it for everything. “Hit” was misunderstood. “Take out” was misunderstood. The vote-by-mail flip isn’t even acknowledged.
When every escalation…is followed by the same two words…and never by a correction from the man himself, “misunderstood” stops being an explanation…and becomes a policy. It means: we will keep saying it…and you will keep being blamed for hearing it.
10. What’s the next sentence, if this one goes unanswered?
I don’t know, and that’s the honest answer. A year ago the line was “we will hit.” This week it’s “let them take out Los Angeles.”
Every time he says the unsayable and pays no price…the ceiling moves up. The only thing that has ever stopped him…is a cost he can feel. Elections are one. Public memory is the other. You control the second one starting right now.
If this landed, subscribe. If it made you angry, good. Send it to one person who still thinks this is normal.
#HoldFast
Back soon.
-Jack
Jack Hopkins
P.S. The thing to hold onto isn’t the outrage. Outrage is cheap…and it burns off by Thursday. The thing to hold onto is the record. Every line in this piece is a thing he or his staff actually said, on a date, in front of cameras. Bookmark the sources below. The next time someone tells you “he didn’t mean it,” you don’t argue. You hand them the link.
P.P.S. He’s at a shipyard in Baltimore today talking about rebuilding America. Thirty-six hours after saying “let them take out Los Angeles.” Not one reporter in the Air Force One pool, because he banned Politico and nobody else would take the seat. That’s the whole story in one sentence: he’ll talk about building the country to a crowd he picked…and he won’t take a question…from anyone he didn’t.
Sources
The Nebraska remarks
Axios – Trump under fire for saying Iran could “take out” LA, San Diego
NBC Los Angeles – ‘Let them take out Los Angeles’: Trump defends ongoing war with Iran
ABC7 Los Angeles – Trump suggests letting Iran ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego
Newsweek – White House defends Trump’s LA, San Diego comment amid backlash
Baptist News Global – Trump says Iran bombing San Diego and LA would be ‘small price to pay’
“If they spit, we will hit” (Los Angeles, 2025)
The Iran war and the soldiers at Port Shuaiba
AP News – Families and comrades say commanders were warned before Port Shuaiba strike
AP News – Wounded soldiers describe failures in follow-up care
New York Times – U.S. bombers moved from RAF Fairford over Iranian drone threat
BBC News – Trump says bombers moved from Fairford because of “some threats”
Vote-by-mail reversal
Taxpayer-funded ads
Press access and the reporter subpoena
Washington Post – White House blocks Politico from Air Force One; no outlet fills the slot
New York Times – Magistrate judge sides with DOJ on subpoena to freelance reporter
CNN – News outlets say White House offered no evidence for national security claims
Incensed.
He knows he is losing, won't have the control that he did when the Dems take the House and most likely the Senate. He's scared shitless and in typical fashion of a man void of character, he's lashing out like a juvenile delinquent. He won't escape the consequences of his actions even though he has for years. I just feel it in my gut that his day of reckoning is near. I've braced myself for the real potential of serious disruption after the Midterms but I think this last 'crack' from Trump has caused even more to pull back from him. The man can't stop digging his own grave and pretty soon those dirt walls are going to cave in on him.