Former Trump adviser: Remarks about LA, San Diego ‘clumsy, sloppy’

David Urban, a former adviser to President Trump, panned the president’s recent comments suggesting Iran could target Los Angeles and San Diego if the regime successfully builds a nuclear weapon.

“I do think that was a clumsy, sloppy kind of statement,” Urban told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an interview Tuesday. “Obviously, he’s riffing there. I don’t — I think that … this administration’s intention the entire time has been to preclude Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, so that it could do anything against any U.S. city in the future.”

“And so, while it was crude and kind of rough and tumble and he kind of laughed about it, I don’t think the president meant it,” he continued.

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Trump earlier this week defended the ongoing military operation in Iran , despite increased energy and cost-of-living expenses. He told GOP supporters during a rally in Nebraska that without the U.S. pressure, the Islamic Republic could seek to “take out” the two cities.

“It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, for keeping our country safe,” the president said Monday evening, adding that Iran could “take out a city.”

“Let ‘em take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego,” he continued. “This is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon.”

The White House rebuffed critics’ framing of the comments.

“The media freakout over President Trump’s comments is not rooted in reality,” White House communications director Steven Cheung wrote Tuesday on social platform X .

“He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped,” he continued. “America is safer because of the President. Iran has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money.”

California Democrats , including lawmakers, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and Gov. Gavin Newsom have blasted the rhetoric as “dangerous.”

The Golden State delegation in Congress also pressed the Trump administration for an apology as Newsom called for them to invoke the 25th Amendment.