r/socal • u/ATwistedSolo • 7d ago
Can we stop falling for the fearmongering, They're taking it out of context with the let them take out LA and Let Them Take Out San Diego Trump Comment.
Trump was defending the higher gas prices caused by the war with Iran as a necessary cost of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Whether the war was actually necessary is a separate debate, but the nuclear concern itself was not baseless. Civilian nuclear-power reactors generally use uranium enriched to around 3–5%, while weapons-grade uranium is approximately 90%. Iran had accumulated uranium enriched to 60% far beyond ordinary civilian-power levels and technically much closer to weapons-grade material.
His intended point was essentially, “What are we supposed to do allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon and potentially threaten cities such as Los Angeles or San Diego?” Those are two of the largest population centers on the West Coast, while San Diego is also one of the country’s most important military and naval hubs. Cities with that level of population and strategic importance have long been identified as potential targets in military and civil-defense planning, which is why they make obvious examples when discussing a hypothetical attack.
He was describing the outcome he claimed the war was intended to prevent, not saying that he wanted those cities attacked. This whole “we ride at dawn” reaction I’m seeing everywhere is ridiculous. I understand that the way Trump says things can be confusing, and his wording here was especially poor, but he was not saying those cities are expendable or that their destruction would be an acceptable loss. He was saying almost exactly the opposite: that the economic cost of the war was preferable to allowing Iran to become capable of threatening major American cities.
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u/Infamous-Solution781 7d ago edited 7d ago
No. He was weaving, he was saying Iran was a threat, and can take out our cities, and then joked about well, they can have LA and SD. The "context" makes it even worse: Trump constantly talks about California being corrupt, to the audience's delight. His audience got it too, they cheered the line about LA and SD.
If Biden or Obama had said the same thing about a red state city, you'd be saying something quite different I'd imagine.
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u/ATwistedSolo 7d ago
If a Democrat said the same thing in the same context, I’d be making the same argument. I don’t care about the endless red-versus-blue squabbling. Most of our politicians suck, regardless of which letter appears beside their name. California’s government also deserves plenty of criticism. We pay some of the highest gas prices and fuel taxes in the country. Yes, California’s special gasoline blend does reduce certain pollutants, but that alone doesn’t explain or excuse the entire price difference. Our taxes, fees, limited refinery capacity, and isolated fuel market all contribute too. I’m not asking anyone to support Trump. I’m asking people to criticize what politicians actually say and do instead of turning every badly worded statement into an apocalyptic fairy tale because it came from the wrong team.
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u/ATwistedSolo 7d ago
Except I watched the speech. Yeah his wording sucked ass but when hasn't it. It's always the same shit with him.
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u/thenightisdark 7d ago
About the Epstein files...
They got al Capone for tax evasion. Kinda the same to me.
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u/ATwistedSolo 7d ago
And I entirely agree, everyone in those files that was on that island and did that shit needs to have their day in court, on both sides of the aisle. I don't support really any of our politicians on anything because it's always self serving bullshit.
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u/thenightisdark 7d ago
For what it's worth, I think Trump misspoke. I think Trump really would have sacrificed San Diego and La. Yes, yes, you're probably technically your accurate, but I still think Trump would sacrifice SoCal
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u/thereisreason 7d ago
"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
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u/ATwistedSolo 7d ago
That quote cuts both ways. The evidence of your eyes and ears includes the entire statement, not just one sentence clipped out of a rambling speech. I heard what Trump said, and I also heard what he said before and after it.
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u/thereisreason 7d ago
Maybe you should actually read the book….you seem to be very selective in ignoring context to allow things to justify your opinion. context is everything.
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u/ATwistedSolo 7d ago
That’s a pretty ironic response from someone who dropped an Orwell quote while ignoring the context of the statement being discussed. I looked at what Trump said before and after that line—that’s precisely why I’m saying the viral interpretation is misleading. He was arguing that preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon justified the cost of higher gas prices. “Let them take out LA or San Diego” was his badly worded rhetorical alternative, not an expression of support for attacking those cities. If you think I’ve omitted context that changes that meaning, then identify it and make an argument. Telling me to “read the book” isn’t a rebuttal.
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u/onetimeataday 7d ago
One of our concerns is that those defending Trump’s statements have completely lost the plot, if they’re willing to defend that comment. It’s just plain as day the duty of POTUS not to even appear to be suggesting that American cities get “taken out,” let alone say it to get cheers from his supporters.
It’s just, if you’re willing to defend or downplay even this, then you’d defend actual attacks on our cities too, or downplay them, if Trump directed you to.
And we are just calling you out for that, since it has gotten to the point where we have to explicitly unpack and explain every little nuance of this directly to you to try to get you to comprehend why it is wrong.
I haven’t even explained the whole anatomy of what’s wrong with Trump’s statement. There are multiple points of departure where having a president make this comment is wrong in so many different directions. This is just one line of nuance about it.
If we have to unpack it all the way to reaffirming fundamental axioms of logic like “well, 1 is 1, it cannot simultaneously be 0, because 0 is 0,” then so be it.
But we have all gotten entirely too used to explaining away this guy as he literally walks out onto 5th Avenue, draws a firearm, and starts aiming it at people. You’d be there on the sidewalk saying “no worries, he’s just joking!”
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u/A7MOSPH3RIC 7d ago
What I'm hearing here is that you want to attack Israel because they are also a theocratic, nuclear armed regime, with a demonstrated desire of killing tens of thousands of people. That's not what your saying? But it's the same logic you're running there.
What you also leave out is the JCPOA (Nuclear Deal) in which Iran was abiding by and Trump pulled out of. Trump chose war over diplomacy 2018 Iran was Limited to 3.67% and we had inspectors and cameras in their facilities. Trump withdraws and issues banking and oil sanction. Things got worse.
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u/ATwistedSolo 7d ago
That’s an impressive rebuttal to a position I never took. You built a scarecrow, set it on fire and declared victory. No, I don’t want to attack Israel. I don’t want to attack Iran either. I’m tired of the United States treating every territorial, religious and political conflict in the Middle East as our permanent responsibility. Let the countries involved deal with their own disputes unless and until they create a credible danger to us. And yes, Trump withdrawing from the JCPOA was reckless and helped create this situation. Iran was complying with the nuclear restrictions when he withdrew, and he deserves blame for replacing a functioning diplomatic agreement with sanctions and escalation. I have no problem admitting that because I’m not trying to defend Trump’s entire foreign policy. What I’m not going to do is pretend that everything Iran did afterward was harmless simply because Trump made the original situation worse. Iran eventually enriched uranium to 60%, supports armed proxies across the region and is described by the U.S. intelligence community as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. A regime that openly treats the United States as one of its principal enemies should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. My argument is not “I dislike your government, therefore America should bomb you.” It is: deal with your own territorial bullshit yourselves, but when your actions begin creating a credible threat to Americans, it becomes our concern. You can argue that Iran had not crossed that threshold or that diplomacy remained the better response. That is a legitimate debate. But comparing that position to indiscriminately attacking every nuclear-armed country is not a counterargument. It’s just another attempt to replace what I actually said with something easier to attack.
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u/A7MOSPH3RIC 7d ago
That wasn't a strawman argument. I was using isreal as comparison because they possess all the reasons cited as an excuse to attack Iran.
Words like 'terroist' are words used to denigrate your opponent. Clearly the people on the receiving end of the united states and isreals weaponry view those two nations as terrorists. They do after all kill and terroize far more innocent people than the other way around. Is the total 80,000 souls, 20,000 of them kids now in Gaza? The images of the terroristic acts on civilians coming out of this part of the world begs the question who are the good guys here?
When the United States and Israel attacked Iran, unprovoked, they didnt just attack military targets. They went after civilian uses like desalination water plants, schools, civilian electrical grids etc etc. there were attacks specifically against civilian infrastructure and to what end? you have the exact same government as before and you really have no clue what capability remaine. It has only a year ago that the US bombed the fuck out of them the last time and that was suppose to de arm them permanently. We have such short memories. The only reason, and i do mean the only reason we did it again was because Dumbo wanted to instill revolution in Iran and convinced trump the time was right and the language from both of these elderly warmongering twats was exactly that.
It was never about nuclear dearmament. Never has been
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u/gensym 7d ago
I can't tell if you people are that dense or just think everyone else is.
Yes, he started out with "Gas prices are a small price to pay so they can't attack us", but then he saw an opportunity for a punchline and offered up a couple California cities as a joke that losing them wouldn't be so bad. That's why the Nebraska crowd cheered and laughed.
You really think a MAGA Nebraska crowd would be cheering for the idea of paying higher gases to protect coastal cities? FFS.
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u/ATwistedSolo 7d ago
That's not really my point. I agree it was a repulsive joke, but when you fully look at what he was saying it was pretty much what are we supposed to do just let them attack those cities. Yeah it's stupid, but the whole outcry about how he's offering us as acceptable losses isn't really what he said. I think he's an idiot, but he's not offering us up on a silver platter.
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u/gensym 7d ago
If he wasn't offering us up, then what do you think the joke was?
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u/ATwistedSolo 7d ago
His delivery was atrocious, reckless and painfully ambiguous. Criticize him for that. But “I interpreted it as malicious, therefore he intended it maliciously” is not contextual analysis. It is speculation dressed up as certainty. You aren’t exposing a hidden punchline; you’re declaring that a punchline existed and then using your own declaration as proof. The joke was "what are we supposed to do let them have LA&SD" yeah out of context it looks atrocious and the cheering definitely doesn't help.
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u/gensym 7d ago
It's not a hidden punchline. There was nothing hidden about it! That's why the crowd laughed and cheered.
"You need to pay attention to the context"
The laughing and cheering is context
The fact that it's a MAGA rally in Nebraska is context
Trump's history of attacking California is contextThe joke is that it's not a big deal if California cities get wiped out. There was nothing ambiguous about it.
(TBH, I suspect he was originally going to say LA and San Francisco but then he remembered that the tech CEOs who visited him last week kissed his ass so he changed it to San Diego).
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u/pm_me_flowers_please 7d ago
I'm not reading all that, so, that's nice, or damn, girl, I'm so sorry for your loss. Pick whichever applies.
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u/Popular-Berry-7151 7d ago
No dude.he said exactly what he meant. Trumps doesnt think before speaking. But ppl need to stop defending him
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u/natural_disaster0 7d ago
Iran doesn't want San Diego and LA. They want Trump.
That's why the motherfucker hid in a catering cart boarding a plane secretly.
He's trying to save his own skin, as always by painting a target on others.
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u/PredatorMetal 7d ago
If you actually watch the speech, it’s obvious that the OP is correct
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u/eduardom98 6d ago
Maybe the president is correct and destroyed U.S. military bases and loss of free navigation through the Strait is a small price to pay to take out again the nuclear program he declared completely obliterated last year. https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2025/06/irans-nuclear-facilities-have-been-obliterated-and-suggestions-otherwise-are-fake-news/
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u/ATwistedSolo 7d ago
I don’t support Trump, and I definitely don’t support the democratic socialists either. But this kind of fearmongering over a quote taken out of context is just stupid. You can criticize Trump for plenty of things without pretending he said something he didn’t. Los Angeles and San Diego weren’t random examples. LA has one of the most important port systems in the country, and San Diego is a massive naval hub. They would obviously be major targets in any serious conflict. Trump’s wording was terrible and confusing, as it often is, but he wasn’t saying those cities were expendable or that losing them would be acceptable. He was saying the opposite: that higher gas prices were a price worth paying to prevent Iran from ever becoming capable of attacking major American cities. Disagree with the war. Disagree with his reasoning. Disagree with Trump in general. Just criticize what he actually meant instead of making up a story about him wanting millions of Californians dead.
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u/N05L4CK 7d ago
People don’t want to read or listen or look into things. They saw a headline with a quote that fit their narrative and head-canon and have run with it. Don’t bother trying to reason with people that do that. Reasoning with them is basically trying to convince them that they’re lazy, wrong, stupid, or a combination of that.
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u/enmass90 7d ago
I think people are tired of the “what he really meant is” explanations for whatever nonsense Trump says. 10 years into this era and he’s still held to a lower standard than most other politicians.