At a rally in Nebraska earlier this week, President Donald Trump, while making his standard argument about why Iran must be prevented from acquiring a nuclear weapon, made a casual comment about Iran taking out two major California cities, Los Angeles and San Diego, and then said it was “a small price to pay.”
In his clumsy, free-associative way, Trump seemed to be attempting to argue that if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, it would get the capability to destroy American cities, and “a small price to pay” was a term Trump frequently uses to defend the high gas prices that have resulted from his Iran adventure.
President Donald Trump greets members of the Navy Midshipmen football team from the U.S. Naval Academy, Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in the State Dining Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance depart after an event celebrating the 2025 College Football National Champion Ohio State University Buckeyes, Monday, April 14, 2025, at the South Portico of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Emily J. Higgins)
But the way he said it, Trump’s statement was taken by quite a few people as him not caring, or possibly even wishing, for Iran to destroy two American cities with a nuclear weapon.
One person who seems to have taken it that way was Gov. Gavin Newsom, governor of the state where Los Angeles and San Diego are located.
This week, Newsom cited the comment as grounds to remove Trump from office under the 25th Amendment.
Taking the 25th
In a statement issued to Time magazine and other news outlets, Newsom described the president as “mentally ill,” before declaring “TIME FOR THE 25TH!,” a reference to the 25th Amendment, which provides a process for removing the president from office should he be incapacitated or unable to perform the duties of the presidency.
In a separate interview with journalist Jim Acosta, Newsom said that Trump’s talk of taking out cities put military personnel, of whom there are many in San Diego, at risk.
Newsom has called for the use of the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office before, including in July, as have numerous other Democrats.
Other California Democrats took shots at Trump over the comments, including the mayors of Los Angeles and San Diego, the senators and Congressmen who represent the state in Congress, and Xavier Becerra, the Democratic candidate for governor of the state, who stated that the lives of Californians “are not a ‘small price to pay’ or a punchline for Donald Trump.”
The letter from members of Congress called on Trump to apologize to the 16 million people who live in the San Diego and Los Angeles metropolitan areas.
Even one Republican congressional candidate in California, Jim Desmond, disagreed with Trump’s comment.
A Constitutional Long Shot
Talk of removing Trump via the 25th Amendment has been around since his first term, and an academic article discussed it as early as 2018.
It was often bandied about as an alternative to impeachment, which, of course, happened twice during Trump’s first presidency.
However, it is highly unlikely that the 25th Amendment can be used to remove Trump from office, unless he suffers some type of medical calamity that leaves him incapacitated and unable to discharge his duties as president.
As The Brookings Institution’s John Hudak said on a podcast, also in 2018, the idea of the 25th was “a fantasy among the president’s opponents that will not come to fruition under the present circumstances.”
Under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, removing the president requires the support of a majority of the vice president and the cabinet, who would write a letter to Congress.
This is meant for situations in which the president is temporarily incapacitated, with the possibility of recovering later on.
This is unlikely to happen with Trump, simply because his cabinet is full of ultra-loyalists who would never vote to remove him from office based on something he said in a speech, unhinged as that statement was.
As Hudak noted, the president can fire his own cabinet, and Trump has never hesitated.
Since the 25th Amendment was ratified in the 1960s, Section 4 has never been invoked.
The White House Responds
Steven Cheung, the notably combative White House Communications Director, said on social media that “the media freakout over President Trump’s comments is not rooted in reality,” going on to explain that Trump was saying at the Nebraska rally that “U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped.”
About the Author: Stephen Silver
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist, and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review, and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, national security, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
