Bass ‘horrified’ by Trump remarks about Los Angeles, San Diego

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) said she was “horrified” by President Trump’s remarks at a recent campaign rally that Iran could “take out” Los Angeles or San Diego, saying a president should not speak of major U.S. cities as a potential cost of war.

Trump defended the economic fallout from the Middle East conflict to a crowd of GOP supporters in Nebraska earlier this week, appearing to suggest the Iranian regime could try to attack the U.S. with a potential nuclear weapon .

“It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe,” Trump said at the Grand Island, Neb., rally. “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.”

The rhetoric received swift backlash from several of California’s Democratic leaders , including Bass, who wrote on social platform X that his comment was “dangerous and could potentially compromise our safety.”

“The role of the president is to protect and defend the American people,” the mayor told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Tuesday. “He went to war with Iran, and he basically said it’s OK, that it’s a small price to pay to attack 3.8 million people in the nation’s largest city.”

“I was horrified by those comments,” she added.

The comment was also criticized by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), a possible contender for the 2028 presidential race, who called the president “deranged and dangerous” for what he described as Trump “saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego.”

The White House has since disputed the interpretation that Trump was promoting the idea that an attack on either city would be an acceptable price of the war.

White House communications director Steven Cheung said on social media Tuesday that Trump was instead arguing that confronting Iran had prevented the regime from posing a greater threat to the U.S. and blamed the media for misrepresenting the remark.

“The media freakout over President Trump’s comments is not rooted in reality,” Cheung said. “He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped.”