At a political rally in Nebraska last night, president Trump made the astonishing suggestion that he would “Let Iran take out Los Angeles or San Diego… It would be a small price to pay”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eltBhn7WV4

The context was that Trump was trying to defuse concerns that many Republican voters currently have about the impact of the Iran war in raising the price of their fuel and groceries. The president was trying to assure his audience that the economic hurt was a small price to pay for ensuring that “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon”.

Trump then went off on a tangent about another “small price” he would apparently be prepared to pay - that of allowing Iran to destroy two of California’s largest cities - a suggestion that this Republican audience cheered to the rafters.

The most charitable assumption is that Trump was thinking of the plot of a Sidney Lumet film called “Fail Safe (1964).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail_Safe_(1964_film)

In this Cold War thriller, Henry Fonda plays a US President who has to make a terrible decision to sanction the destruction of New York in order to prevent an all-out thermonuclear war, after US bombers have mistakenly destroyed Moscow.

Los Angeles and San Diego have a population of some 10 million people. I have family and friends in both cities and have visited both of them on a number of  occasions - so I’m not inclined to countenance  or excuse Trump’s remarks under any circumstances. But I’m curious to know what others make of them ?

56 minutes ago, toucana said:

“Let Iran take out Los Angeles or San Diego… It would be a small price to pay”

I'm guessing that these cities are not dyed in the wool Republican strongholds. Or maybe not uniformly WASPish?

Sounds rather like wishful thinking... some dotard letting slip the quiet stuff out loud.

3 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

I'm guessing that these cities are not dyed in the wool Republican strongholds. Or maybe not uniformly WASPish?

Sounds rather like wishful thinking... some dotard letting slip the quiet stuff out loud.

Well California in general, and Los Angeles and San Diego in particular seem to feature as the Sodom and Gomorrah of left-wing liberal wokeness and communism in the collective imagination of the MAGA movement  (and don’t even mention San Francisco) - hence the rousing cheers Trump got at his rally in Nebraska last night.

But as anyone who has visited California could testify, the political reality is a lot more complex and nuanced than these Trumpian caricatures would suggest. San Diego with its year-long Riviera climate is a major US Navy base and the home of the Marine Corps. Coronado island in San Diego Bay is said to have the largest population of retired Admirals per sq/ft to be found anywhere in the world. There is an enormous infrastructure of military industrial and aerospace related contractors all around the bay area. Not to mention some of the largest naval munitions stores in the USA, and berthing spaces for the enormous Nimitz class aircraft carriers based in San Diego.

If you drive north to Los Angeles (a three hour drive from San Diego) you find yourself in a vast dystopian urban sprawl of endless freeway intersections and off-ramps - so confusing that even experienced drivers can get lost navigating it. But drive just a little way north beyond  the city and you will find yourself in the San Joaquin valley, one of the principal citrus growing and vineyard areas of California, and I can tell you it is one of the most conservative Trump worshipping rural areas you could ever find yourself in.  (I attended two large family weddings there a few years ago).

He has dementia. And one effect is that his trolling the libtards (which is what the faithful come to these rallies to hear) gets more OTT. Back in the eighties, he still managed some superficial charm and capacity for filtering himself. I think most people even then knew he was a sociopath with $$$, but he could navigate social circles where that was accepted if you were housebroken. As for

19 minutes ago, toucana said:

the Sodom and Gomorrah of left-wing liberal wokeness and communism

that's really more the Bay Area, in most right-wing ideological maps.

21 minutes ago, toucana said:

If you drive north to Los Angeles (a three hour drive from San Diego) you find yourself in a vast dystopian urban sprawl of endless freeway intersections and off-ramps - so confusing that even experienced drivers can get lost navigating it.

I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque! 😉

26 minutes ago, TheVat said:

I think most people even then knew he was a sociopath with $$$, but he could navigate social circles

And when he couldn't, he would just slap/punch the 15 year-old girl in the head, when she refused to fellate him.
Allegedly ...

Now he doesn't need to 'navigate' anymore; He's got the FBI and DOJ running interference, and saying "nothing to see here".

It is part of the general them vs us narrative that he and the far-right has been running on. Not precisely a new and he keeps inventing such things and basically uses his rallies as focus group to see which one gives the biggest cheers. But he also needs to keep escalating, so that he ends up in press.

7 hours ago, MigL said:

Now he doesn't need to 'navigate' anymore; He's got the FBI and DOJ running interference, and saying "nothing to see here".

And don't forget about "Operation Ep(stein)ic Fury"...

I think it is trollery, like so much of Trump's rhetoric. Get his political enemies all worked up and watch the media pack rise to the bait - and be entirely ineffective about it. Even win some sympathy votes for 'being oppressed'. Real issues and actions of profoundly important policy don't get a look in.

But I hold the media much to blame in some of our worst problems. Their whole business model is utterly amoral and seem to see their role as pivotal, the arbiters of public opinion. Issues like climate and energy are seen as 'better, effective' marketing, not about the top level science based advice at all - which is devalued and distrusted as a consequence.

Edited October 8Oct 8 by Ken Fabian

November 2nd can't come soon enough ...

51 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

think it is trollery, like so much of Trump's rhetoric. Get his political enemies all worked up and watch the media pack rise to the bait - and be entirely ineffective about it. Even win some sympathy votes for 'being oppressed'. Real issues and actions of profoundly important policy don't get a look in.

For sure, Turnip rallies have never been about MAGA policy positions or real issues. What impresses me (in a negative sense) is his ability to shape public outrage into being oppressed, even when he's suggested something like the sick trolling in the OP. Maybe somewhat similar to the office manager who makes sickening rape jokes or racist jokes, and then tells everyone he's being cancelled by the "humorless" employees who reported him upstairs. Unfortunately we don't seem to have an "upstairs office" for dealing with bad presidents anymore.

6 minutes ago, MigL said:

November 2nd can't come soon enough ...

Will be watching the returns peering out from between the fingers over my eyes.