In what is increasingly becoming a bizarre, unstable, dark parody of a presidency, Donald Trump is now encouraging the Islamic Republic of Iran to nuke Los Angeles.
Or at least, that’s what it sounded like.
Donald Trump Speaking at CPAC. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Donald Trump Giving a Speech. Image Credit: Gage Skidmore.
Of course, it was a crude joke made at one of his ridiculous rallies in Nebraska as part of his desperate campaign to prevent the Republican Party from totally losing the Legislative Branch this November.
That doesn’t make it any better. And the GOP is going to pay for it.
The Populist President Loses the People
“Let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego!”
If Donald Trump still hosted The Apprentice, with a massive Twitter following and a reputation for hot takes, we could forgive this sort of rhetoric.
In our most unguarded moments, we might even have chuckled (albeit uncomfortably) at those comments if they had come from a reality television personality rather than the forty-seventh president of the United States, who started a wildly unpopular war of choice with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
A country, mind you, that the president insists was just weeks away from totally nuking Israel (even though he had spent the preceding several months arguing that he had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear weapons capability).
But the president is no longer a reality television star or a gonzo real estate magnate from Manhattan.
He’s the president who has repeatedly threatened nuclear annihilation upon the Persian civilization and people.
Just recently, he ruminated at the United Nations General Assembly on whether he’d engage in a smorgasbord of war crimes against the Iranians if they refused to surrender. This isn’t a one-off.
It’s a grotesquely dangerous pattern with the president.
At best, it’s another meaningless verbal mistake designed to keep the corporate media and social media influencers distracted; to feed the beast, as it were, while the administration moves forward with whatever its real intentions are.
Given that the president keeps hinting that he might run for a third term or the way in which he routinely mocks Blue States–not just politically but on a personal level–one sees the way in which the current president holds at least half the country in contempt.
Speaking in Nebraska and making those comments about Los Angeles, America’s second-largest city and one of the most iconic cities in the world, at a time when the United States is in a major war over nuclear weapons should make everyone’s skin crawl.
What is the president really saying there?
Making Karen Bass Look Good
It’s pretty sad when Karen Bass, the Democrat mayor of Los Angeles (who might be one of the country’s worst mayors, by the way), sounds more presidential and reasonable than Trump. “The role of a president is to protect the country, not actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives.” That’s what she said. Of course, she’s right.
And that’s the lady who tried to hide from her voters when it was revealed she was gallivanting around Africa on a taxpayer-funded trip while her city was burning last year.
It’s shocking to see how Trump behaved even a year ago compared to where he is today.
A year ago, he stood with the dispossessed homeowners of Los Angeles, who were fighting to restore their properties after that horrific citywide fire consumed them all.
At the same time, Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom worked to prevent those properties from being restored.
Today, it seems that the forty-seventh president wishes more of the city had burned.
Never mind that some of Trump’s wealthiest and most powerful supporters are in places like Los Angeles — yes, that LA. Or that a disproportionate number of Californians voted for the president’s reelection (more than they have for any Republican presidential candidate in years). Burn them all like the mad king in Game of Thrones.
Picking Fights with Americans During War
The fact is that the prospect of nuclear war is the highest it has ever been since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Not just in the Middle East, where Trump started his unpopular war of choice against Iran, but also in Europe, as both Ukraine and Russia compete to see how much of each other’s energy infrastructure they can destroy before the harsh winter sets in.
But the American president, rather than rallying the American people irrespective of their opinions about him or his policies, wants to divide the country even more.
It’s strange, especially since the president’s party is just a few weeks away from a Midterm election the president needs to win, and he needs as many Americans as possible supporting his war effort.
About the author: Brandon J. Weichert
Brandon J. Weichert is the Senior National Security Editor. He also manages The Weichert Brief on Substack. Weichert also hosts “National Security Talk” on Rumble. He is the author of four bestselling national security books, most recently A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine (Encounter Books). Follow him via Twitter/X @WeTheBrandon.
