‘We want honest,’ Trump said at one point, confusingly. Yes, we do.’ Photograph: Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreen‘We want honest,’ Trump said at one point, confusingly. Yes, we do.’ Photograph: Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty Images‘Take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego? Trump is beyond irresponsibleTed WidmerWe appear to be entering a new era, in which political desperation at home leads to increasingly unhinged threats abroad
Donald Trump was in Nebraska on Monday, and though his long rally speech had elements of a performance, this was no Bruce Springsteen album. He offered another dark meditation on a world spiraling out of control, one in which the destruction of American cities is increasingly a possibility, unless Americans trust him to use the vast powers of the presidency to annihilate his foes.
The president drew fury when he suggested that Iran could launch a nuclear attack and “take out” Los Angeles or San Diego. California leaders reacted with scorn at Trump’s alarmism.
Governor Gavin Newsom denounced Trump as “deranged and dangerous”, while the mayors of Los Angeles and San Diego, Karen Bass and Todd Gloria, objected strenuously to putting their cities in harm’s way, even if only in his feverish imagination.
Perhaps the worst problem with Trump’s speech – and there were many – was not that it vividly daydreamed about Armageddon-on-the-Pacific. It was just so delusional that it had almost no basis in fact at all.
It is inherently destabilizing when a nation’s leader cannot be trusted to make an accurate statement, and the situation is especially troubling when the nation is the United States, the defender of the rules-based order since 1945.
First, the claim itself. When read inside the transcript, the words don’t make a great deal of sense. It’s almost like scat singing as the president goes into his famous “weave”, his word for the way he lurches from one half-formed thought to another, like a rodeo clown on a bucking bronco.
“[Kamala] stole a lot of things that didn’t work out too well. But I want, I wanna see, I wanna see a tremendous victory. You wanna see a tremendous victory, because it verifies all the things we did. And again, remember, with the word, it’s just artificial, it’s a little bit high. It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe.
“They can take out a city. Let them take, let it, 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 gonna be over very soon. It’s essentially almost over with.”
If he was talking about the war as being “almost over with”, then he’s certainly wrong, as the conflict drags into its eighth month with no sign of resolution. But if he was talking about the midterms, then he’s correct that it will end soon, and not well for him.
In effect, he now has to go into the reddest part of a red state to sustain his vanishing popularity. Monday night’s rally was held at the Nebraska State Fairgrounds, in Hall county, Nebraska, which had a population of 62,895 in 2020. Even farmers are wary of this war, which has raised the price of fertilizers and diesel.
The language about LA and San Diego was to be fair, quite vague. Presumably, he was worried that Iran’s nuclear program might be able to target LA or San Diego. But by saying “let them …” it almost sounded like he was encouraging them to, as when John F Kennedy, in Berlin, held up that city as a model of courage and said: “Let them come to Berlin,” in both English and German).
In either case, there is no possibility of it happening, as his military advisers know, and as even he must know at some level. Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, nor can its missiles reach the United States, on either the east or west coast.
Furthermore, it is the height of irresponsibility to even discuss such an unimaginable threat. All foreign leaders understand that any attack on the United States with a nuclear weapon would result in an overwhelming counterattack. It’s called deterrence.
It is that knowledge – and the cautious way in which previous American presidents have talked about nuclear weapons – that has helped to preserve the peace all these years. We appear to be entering a new era, in which political desperation at home leads to increasingly unhinged threats abroad.
The rest of the speech was also a mess. There was a lot of red-baiting, despite the fact that the cold war ended in 1991. There were the usual schoolyard insults, in this case lobbed toward the Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico (“I call him Alfred E Neuman”) and Georgia senator Jon Ossoff (“he looks like Pee-wee Herman to me”).
And more pot-stirring, with no basis in fact. Often, his claims undermined each other, as Trump claimed both that Iran has been rendered toothless (“we’re kicking Iran’s ass”) and that it remains a lethal threat, capable of destroying our second- and eighth-largest cities. Which one is it? Over and over, we have heard that Iran’s nuclear program has been “obliterated”. But if so, why are we still at war?
The rest of the speech was the usual farrago of distortions and lies, as the most casual effort to factcheck shows. “We want honest,” Trump said at one point, confusingly. Yes, we do.
But whether we are going to get it, is another question entirely.
Ted Widmer, a former White House speechwriter, is the editor of American Speeches, and the recently published The Living Declaration: A Biography of America’s Founding Text, both published by the Library of America
