Trump repeats remarks on Iran striking San Diego, Los Angeles; White House says taken out of context

President Donald Trump clearly gets a kick out of imagining Iran destroying American cities.

Speaking at a rally in San Antonio Wednesday night, Trump doubled down on the outlandish fallacy that anyone complaining about high gas prices should consider the alternative: that Iran could strike Los Angeles or San Diego.

"But you wanna see trauma? You wanna see problems? And I said it the other day, let them hit a missile into San Diego or Los Angeles on the way. Let them hit—you wanna see a horror show, you wanna see problems? Let them hit San Diego. Let them hit Los Angeles. And you wanna see some bad things happen. You wanna see a country that would be in free fall," Trump said. "We're not gonna let that happen. We protect our cities, we protect our country."

Trump made a similar remark at a rally in Nebraska earlier this week, where he said, "They can take out a city. Let them take, let them take out Los Angeles; let them take out San Diego. That's—this is a very small price to pay, and it's going to be over with very soon."

Some viewers believed that Trump had issued an invitation to Iran to destroy two American cities. The rally crowd even burst into cheers when the president evoked the imminent destruction of California, a consistent target of his administration. But Trump's team insisted that his comment was simply taken out of context: His "let them" comment was a warning of what could happen if the United States did not intervene, and that the "small price to pay" referred to high prices of goods and services.

"He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn't been stopped," White House communications director Steven Cheung wrote on X.

Trump's decision to revisit his controversial comment clarifies everything: Clearly he likes to evoke the destruction of these blue cities in order to illustrate his nonsensical point about high gas prices to crowds in red states. His dramatics are just another way to sidestep blame for high prices.

It's worth noting that Trump's fallacy is a false one. Multiple former Trump administration officials have contradicted the president's claims that Iran's nuclear program presented any imminent threat to national security. Trump himself claimed earlier this week that Iran's nuclear program had been obliterated in June 2025, a full eight months before he ordered attacks in March 2026.

Read about what Trump said: Trump Suggests Letting Iran "Take Out" Los Angeles and San Diego

Kimberly Guilfoyle Allegedly Sought $100,000 From Donor During Ambassador Confirmation

Kimberly Guilfoyle begged a donor to send her $100,000 without leaving a trace as part of her pay-to-play grift—in the midst of her confirmation process last year to become U.S. ambassador to Greece.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Guilfoyle urged Trump donor and former congressional candidate Eric Deters to send her hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in exchange she'd make sure the administration took special care of Deters and his personal tax issues. Guilfoyle is also the former wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom and ex-fiancé of Donald Trump Jr.

"You could just send it here. It won't show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express, that's all that will show," Guilfoyle wrote to Deters on July 3, 2025. "Please. And I have you down as one of my special guests for my hearing in DC on Wednesday.... I can get you in for a meeting on the matter we discussed please get back to me ASAP."

"Honey please I need you to get this done for me today," she said, referring to the payment.

Guilfoyle was confirmed as ambassador just months later in September.

Deters claimed that while he and Guilfoyle exchanged texts and promises for months ("I will be your Trump ride or die, forever and ever," she told him at one point), he never sent her any money.

Deters is the same former Kentucky GOP gubernatorial candidate who hosts the now-defunct Freedom Fest in Kentucky. Guilfoyle was one of the event's earliest headliners, as Deters paid her $300,000 to speak there starting in 2020. In 2024, Deters sought out Guilfoyle's help with an extradition request for Abubakar Atiq Durrani, an Ohio doctor who fled to Pakistan after he was charged with defrauding insurers with unnecessary spinal surgeries on kids. Deters, who was representing the families of the children, ran into a problem with Durrani's malpractice insurer, MedPro, which held it wasn't liable for his actions. MedPro instead sued Deters for "a calculated scheme to extract payments" from the company, "at first through abusive litigation, and by ultimately outright extortion through threats of violence and murder and by blackmail against the company's CEO." The accusations—which Deters denies—led him to reach out to Guilfoyle, even telling her he'd pay her $1 million to get him a spot on Tucker Carlson's show to draw attention to his situation.

Guilfoyle and Deters began to speak more frequently after her nomination as ambassador.

"Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things," Guilfoyle wrote in one message to Deters. "It's really dangerous … and you could simply just call me on signal."

She even chastised him for speaking to a producer on her podcast about their deal, saying that "it's unbelievable when we have a private arrangement with you that you would now CC a producer talking about money.... Do not say we have any arrangement. What a nightmare you'll literally cost me my ambassadorship stop writing."

Deters claims he didn't end up making any payments to Guilfoyle and had "not received one favor."

Guilfoyle's attorneys deny that the messages between her and Deters are legitimate, and claim that if anything he owed her speaking fees from his defunct Freedom Fest. Deters denies that.

This is a massive ethics question that the administration will likely try its hardest to ignore, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio did before leaving for Greece.

"I'm not going to comment," he told reporters.

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Trump Met With Convicted Election Denier Tina Peters Ahead of Midterms

President Trump's meeting with convicted election denier Tina Peters on Monday concerned some disturbing plans for the upcoming midterm elections.

Peter Ticktin, Peters's attorney, said that she proposed that Trump seize ballots from across the country and conduct a hand recount, reports Kyle Clark of Colorado's 9 News.

"It's a good plan, and I do think that something like that is probably going to happen," Ticktin said to right-wing podcaster Joe Oltmann in Colorado. "In the event that we have this kind of disaster, and everything goes wrong, and the vote is crazy, and the senatorial races put it up there to remove the president and the vice president, in that nightmare, should it come true, Donald Trump is not going to relinquish control again."

Oltmann has called for the state's top Democrats to be executed in the past, and said on the podcast that violence is going to be necessary. Ticktin said on the podcast that Trump should be in control of America's weapons if the country descends into civil war.

"So, he's got nothing to lose, the nation has nothing to lose, it's better if we're going to have a civil war of any sort that it would be martial law with our side in control of the armaments," Ticktin said.

Normally, this kind of speculation would be written off as a conspiracy theory from the fringe. But Peters was invited to the White House for a meeting, and had her prison sentence for election tampering commuted after Trump put pressure on Colorado's Democratic Governor Jared Polis. Trump is desperate to avoid a Democratic takeover of Congress after the midterms, and seems willing to entertain all kinds of crazy ideas.

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DNC Sues Trump Administration Over Taxpayer-Funded Pro-Trump Ads

The Democratic National Committee sued the Trump administration Wednesday, alleging that recent TV advertisements espousing the president's political agenda were funded by taxpayers and thus violated U.S. propaganda law.

The 31-page complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accuses Donald Trump of personally directing the advertisements. The DNC has asked the court to intervene in the scheme to stop the ads and the flow of public funds that has buoyed their creation and proliferation.

More than $12 million in government funds have been spent on the pro-Trump ads since September, according to the ad-tracking service AdImpact. The Department of Homeland Security had previously set aside $20 million for the dubious expenditure, the Associated Press reported late last month.

The administration ultimately created four adverts to glorify Trump, framing the MAGA leader as a centerpiece of American resistance. One 30-second commercial, set to JMSN's track "Love Me," framed Trump as the bastion of American strength and resistance against foreign foes.

The refrain, "love me," was played repeatedly while images of Trump flashed across the screen, and text appeared reiterating Trump's claim that "America will never be a communist country."

"He is the toughest, most resilient person that I've ever met and nothing is going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country that he's lost," UFC President Dana White can be heard saying towards the end of the clip.

All four ads were accompanied by an unusual disclaimer: "Paid for by the U.S. government." One appeared to use footage from a 2024 spot for Trump's presidential campaign.

Trump practically confessed to the arrangement on Monday, relenting to public backlash via a Truth Social post in which he said he would no longer use taxpayer money on the adverts.

"The Radical Left is upset with the fact that I am taking Ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A., and paying for them with U.S.A. money," Trump wrote. "This is a rather standard thing to do but, rather than doing that, although nothing will make them happy, I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc."

He did not, however, mention if he would use his coffers to reimburse the American people.