One rally. Two states. A 25th Amendment demand from Gavin Newsom, a White House damage-control campaign, and a war that is now at the center of the November elections.

Thursday, October 8, 2026: SAN ANTONIO, Texas. President Donald Trump refused to walk back one of the most controversial lines of his campaign season on Wednesday. He repeated it, and he did so in front of a Texas crowd with the midterms less than a month away.

“You want to see trauma? You want to see problems? And I said it the other day, let them hit a missile into San Diego or Los Angeles on the way,” Trump said at a rally in San Antonio. “You want to see a horror show? Let them hit San Diego. Let them hit Los Angeles.”

He then pivoted. “You want to see some bad things happen? You want see a country in free fall? We’re not going to let that happen,” he continued.

The second performance came just two days after a Nebraska rally set off a political firestorm. California’s governor called the president “mentally ill.” Two big-city mayors said their residents were not expendable. The White House spent days insisting the whole thing had been misunderstood.

IT STARTED IN NEBRASKA: THE LINE THAT LIT THE FUSE

The controversy began Monday, October 5, at a campaign rally in Grand Island, Nebraska. Trump made the comments while defending the war with Iran and its economic costs. He told the crowd, “Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.”

The remark came as part of a broader argument about the price Americans are paying for the conflict. Facing an unpopular war and stubbornly high gas prices, Trump seemed to argue that the current economic pain is a small price to pay for keeping the world and the country safe. In Nebraska, he argued that the costs of the war were worth bearing because it was vital to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Critics focused on the plain wording. Supporters and the White House pointed to the surrounding context. Within hours the clip was spreading across social media, and by Tuesday it had become the dominant political story of the week.

The Los Angeles Times reported that it was unclear whether the comments were based on any intelligence. No public evidence has emerged that Iran has the capability or intent to strike either city, and the White House has not claimed otherwise. Its defense rests on a hypothetical: what could have happened had Iran not been stopped.

“TIME FOR THE 25TH!”: NEWSOM GOES NUCLEAR

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s reaction was immediate and maximal.

“Donald Trump is mentally ill,” Newsom said in a statement to TIME and other outlets, adding, “TIME FOR THE 25TH!” The reference is to the constitutional provision that governs presidential succession and the removal of a president who is unable to discharge the powers of the office.

Newsom tied the remark to his long-running conflict with the administration over California. He noted that after sending the National Guard and Marines to California, the president was now saying foreign enemies should “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego. That refers to the 2025 standoff that led to the lawsuit Newsom v. Trump. California sued after the administration federalized and deployed the state’s National Guard in response to the June 2025 Los Angeles protests, and Trump ended that deployment on December 31, 2025.

Newsom was not alone. Sen. Alex Padilla and The View co-host Sunny Hostin also called for invoking the 25th Amendment over the comment. Newsweek noted this was not Newsom’s first such demand. He also called for it in July after a Trump speech about election integrity, describing it as the “rambling of a mad king.”

A reality check is warranted. Newsom’s demand does not activate the 25th Amendment. Under the amendment’s Section 4, removal requires the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet, or another body designated by Congress, to declare the president unable to serve. Nothing suggests that is under consideration. Newsom’s call is political messaging, though it is messaging aimed at a very large audience.

“NOT COLLATERAL DAMAGE”: THE MAYORS RESPOND

The mayors of the two cities named by the president were equally blunt.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called the comments “dangerous and could potentially compromise our safety,” according to The Hill. In remarks reported by TIME, she called the president’s remark “completely irresponsible” and said the role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives.

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria offered the line that quickly became the story’s rallying cry. He said his city was “not collateral damage” in the war with Iran and added: “Keep our city out of your reckless war talk.”

San Diego is home to one of the largest concentrations of U.S. naval and Marine Corps installations in the country, and Los Angeles is one of the nation’s biggest population centers and busiest ports. Officials in both cities have long treated their exposure to foreign threats as a serious planning matter, which helps explain why a casual-sounding riff landed so badly on the West Coast.

THE WHITE HOUSE FIGHTS BACK: “THE MEDIA FREAKOUT IS NOT ROOTED IN REALITY”

The administration did not apologize. It argued that the president had been misread.

White House communications director Steven Cheung addressed the controversy on X on Tuesday. “The media freakout over President Trump’s comments is not rooted in reality,” he wrote.

“He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped. America is safer because of the President. Iran has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money,” Cheung said.

That is the core of the defense. In the White House’s telling, Trump was describing a counterfactual in which an unchecked, nuclear-armed Iran could have threatened California, not endorsing an attack. The White House maintains the president was referring to preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The defense has an obvious weakness, and critics were quick to name it. The phrase “let them take out Los Angeles” is a directive-sounding construction in the present tense, and Trump used the same grammar again in San Antonio. Defenders counter that the president speaks in a loose, improvisational style at rallies, and that transcripts of any extended off-the-cuff speech can be mined for lines that sound worse than they were meant.

THE SAN ANTONIO “REDO”: DOUBLING DOWN OR CLEANING UP?

How to characterize Wednesday’s remarks depends on who is describing them.

The Hill framed the San Antonio speech as Trump doubling down. NBC News described it differently. NBC reported that Trump appeared to reframe the comment, suggesting Iran would only hit the two cities if it had nuclear weapons. It added that he sought to clean up the earlier remarks by recasting them as part of his explanation of the Iran war, saying he had “no choice.”

Both readings fit the transcript. Trump repeated the “let them hit” phrase verbatim, which is the doubling down. In the same breath he said “we’re not going to let that happen,” which is the reframing. The president’s apparent message was that the disaster scenario was what the war was fought to prevent. He chose to deliver that message by repeating the exact words that had caused the uproar, and his campaign team’s reaction to that choice is not publicly known.

THE BACKDROP: A SIX-MONTH WAR, $100 OIL, AND A MIDTERM CLOCK

To understand why the remark matters so much, you have to understand the political environment in which it landed.

The war with Iran began in late February, and global oil prices stood above $104 a barrel in early September, a rise of nearly 50% since the outbreak. The conflict set off what ABC News described as the largest oil supply shock ever recorded. Brent crude recently pushed back past the $100 threshold for the first time since July as exchanges of fire between the U.S. and Iran escalated.

Fuel costs are a daily reminder for ordinary Americans. AAA data showed the national gas price average climbing to $4.56 a gallon at one point. Diesel prices, which affect the cost of shipping and production, hit an all-time high.

Diplomacy has not produced a breakthrough. In recent weeks the two sides have traded proposals aimed at ending the war and restoring free passage through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for global energy supplies. Trump has dismissed Iran’s most recent offer and cautioned that U.S. military action could escalate after the November midterm elections. Vice President JD Vance, a key figure in the talks, has stressed that verbal pledges alone would not suffice.

Trump’s own forecasts have shifted. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday as he left Washington for San Antonio, he said the war would be over “very quickly” and that oil prices would “come tumbling down.” Weeks earlier he conceded something more sobering. He said oil prices likely won’t come down until after the midterms, a striking acknowledgment about the state of the conflict.

That is the context in which the California remarks were made. The president is defending a war that polls have shown to be unpopular, one whose economic costs are being felt at the pump. In that setting, a line suggesting that damage to major American cities might be an acceptable price struck critics as tone-deaf at best.

TROUBLE IN TEXAS: PROTESTS, A MISSING GOVERNOR, AND A LEAKED TAPE

The San Antonio rally was supposed to shore up a vulnerable Republican ticket. It showed how rough the terrain has become.

The AP reported that Trump fought to rally Texas voters behind embattled Senate candidate Ken Paxton as a series of protests disrupted the event. As the interruptions continued, Trump said, “Those are really bad-looking people.”

The AP placed the disruptions in a larger picture. Texas is the nation’s most populous reliably Republican state, where Trump won in 2024 by almost 14 percentage points, but with Election Day less than a month away, his poor approval ratings, the Iran war and soaring gas prices have threatened Republicans in virtually every state.

Two other details stood out. Gov. Greg Abbott did not appear with Trump and was scheduled instead to headline a hospital dedication about 330 miles away. A Texas Democratic Party spokesperson seized on that absence, accusing Abbott of finding “somewhere else to be” as families face record-high prices.

And there was the matter of what the president left out. Trump made no mention of a recently leaked recording in which Paxton lamented the war in Iran and rising fuel prices while complaining that his campaign was being run by operatives in Washington. The recording, if authentic as reported, suggests that unease about the war reaches into the president’s own party, including a candidate he was there to promote.

REPUBLICANS SQUIRM: “NO AMERICAN CITY IS EXPENDABLE”

The most telling reactions may be the ones from the president’s own side.

Jim Desmond, a Republican congressional candidate from San Diego, said “no American city is expendable.” Even some Trump allies reportedly conceded that the remarks were an unhelpful distraction a month before the midterms.

For Republicans in competitive California districts, the timing is especially unwelcome. The party is already fighting a difficult national environment, and the president’s remarks gave Democrats a ready-made ad. The Hill described the episode as a political gift for Democrats in California and a headache for some Republicans there.

Newsom has leaned into the moment. He was already on a tear against the administration’s handling of the conflict, which he has dubbed “Trump’s War.” The governor, widely regarded as a likely 2028 presidential contender, has made confronting Trump a central part of his national profile, and each new controversy feeds that strategy.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

Several threads are worth watching in the coming days.

• The war itself. Talks over ending the conflict and reopening Hormuz continue, but the sides remain far apart. Trump’s warning of possible escalation after the midterms is itself newsworthy, since it suggests the administration does not expect a quick diplomatic exit.
• Gas and oil prices. Few issues will shape the midterms more than the price at the pump. Trump has tied relief to the end of the war and, at times, to the end of the election. Voters will judge whether that promise holds.
• The California fallout. Expect Democratic campaigns in California, and nationally, to run the clip repeatedly. Whether it moves votes in a state that is already reliably Democratic is a separate question, though it may motivate turnout and fundraising.
• Whether Trump repeats it. He has now said it at two rallies, and he has three more weeks of campaign stops ahead of him. The White House line is that the remarks were clear in context. If the president keeps returning to the phrasing, the controversy will keep getting new life.
• The 25th Amendment chatter. Do not expect formal action. The mechanism needs the vice president and a Cabinet majority, and nothing suggests either is inclined to act. The calls will stay a rhetorical weapon.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Strip away the political noise and the dispute comes down to two competing readings of a single sentence.

Critics hear a president, in the middle of an unpopular war, saying aloud that the potential destruction of two major American cities is an acceptable price, and then saying it again for emphasis. The White House hears a president making the opposite point: that his aggressive policy prevented precisely that outcome, and that the media is willfully misquoting him.

Both sides can point to Trump’s actual words, and that is why the story has legs. What is not in dispute is the setting. The war is six months old, gas is expensive, a key Texas Senate race is in trouble, and the midterms are weeks away. In that environment, every unscripted line from the podium carries more weight, and this one has already become a defining moment of the campaign’s final stretch.

This is a developing story and details may change as new information emerges.