At a campaign rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, on October 5, President Donald Trump was defending the war with Iran and talking about the economic pain caused by higher fuel prices.
He said that higher prices were “a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe.”
Then came this:
“They could take out a city. Let them take — 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 going to be over very soon.”
And the crowd cheered.
That exchange is not a paraphrase manufactured by an opponent. The rally was a campaign event in Grand Island, Nebraska, and multiple news organizations reported the statement and its context. Reuters reported that Trump was defending the Iran war and the economic costs associated with it when he made the remarks. CNN's transcript also records cheering from the audience immediately after the reference to Los Angeles and San Diego.
The White House says critics are misrepresenting what Trump meant.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said Trump was not suggesting that Iran should attack American cities. According to the administration, Trump was arguing that without his actions against Iran and its nuclear program, American cities could someday face that danger.
Fine.
Give him that context.
I still think the words matter.
The President of the United States is not a guy sitting at the end of a bar throwing around a poorly worded hypothetical.
He is commander in chief of the United States armed forces.
When the President talks about a foreign adversary “taking out” Los Angeles or San Diego, the words carry a weight that they simply do not carry when spoken by almost anyone else.
And “take out a city” doesn't mean breaking some windows.
Los Angeles has millions of residents. San Diego is one of the largest cities in the country and is home to an enormous military community. Reuters noted that San Diego alone has more than 115,000 active-duty military personnel.
Those aren't abstractions.
They are families, children, sailors and marines. They're firefighters and teachers. People sitting in traffic, going to work, eating dinner and putting their kids to bed.
So when I hear:
“Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.”
I don't particularly care whether the intended rhetorical point was that we prevented this from happening.
A President ought to be capable of expressing that thought without casually describing the destruction of two American cities as a “small price to pay.”
Now reverse the roles
Imagine that an ordinary American — Joe Citizen — stood before a crowd and said:
“They can take out the President.”
What do you suppose would happen?
At the very least, I suspect the Secret Service would become interested rather quickly.
Federal law specifically prohibits knowingly and willfully making certain threats to kill, kidnap or inflict bodily harm upon the President. A conviction under 18 U.S.C. §871 can carry up to five years in prison.
There is an important legal qualification here.
Not every ugly, reckless or offensive statement is a criminal threat. The Supreme Court has held that “true threats” occupy a narrow category of speech outside normal First Amendment protection, and criminal liability generally requires evidence that the speaker had at least a reckless awareness of the threatening nature of the communication.
So I am not claiming that someone would automatically be prosecuted merely for uttering those words. But I am asking something simpler. Would we shrug? Would we say, “Oh, he was just riffing”?
Would we spend the next day parsing his syntax and explaining that technically he didn't mean it literally? Or would someone in authority want to know exactly what he meant? That is the contrast that bothers me.
And then there is the applause
The part of the video that bothers me most may not even be Trump's words. It is the reaction. The crowd cheered. Think about that for a moment.
The President mentioned an adversary “taking out” Los Angeles and San Diego — two American cities — and the response from fellow Americans was applause. CNN's transcript of the rally records the cheering at that moment.
That should bother us regardless of party. If Joe Biden had said it, it should bother Democrats. If George W. Bush had said it, it should bother Republicans. If Barack Obama had said it, it should bother Democrats. If Donald Trump says it, it should bother Republicans. There ought to be certain things that still belong to all of us. American cities should be among them.
This is bigger than one badly phrased sentence
Our politics has gradually conditioned us to treat everything as a team sport. If our guy says something outrageous, we search desperately for context. If their guy says something outrageous, context becomes irrelevant. We shouldn't live that way.
Presidents deserve fair treatment. Their remarks should be quoted accurately and placed in context. Trump was talking about Iran, nuclear weapons, the war and his contention that the costs Americans are currently bearing are preferable to the danger he believes would have existed otherwise. That context should absolutely be included. PolitiFact similarly concluded that claims saying Trump simply “called for” Iran to attack California omitted the surrounding context.
But context does not require us to pretend words have no meaning. There is an enormous difference between saying:
“If Iran obtained a nuclear weapon, American cities could eventually be at risk.”
and saying:
“Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.”
A President ought to understand that difference. And an American audience ought to understand that cheering the second formulation is not normal.
Maybe that is the question worth asking
Not:
Can someone explain what he meant?
Of course they can.
Not:
Can lawyers construct an argument about whether it constituted a threat?
Of course they can. The question I keep coming back to is much simpler:
Where have we gotten as a country when the President of the United States can talk about an adversary taking out an American city — and Americans applaud?
I don't want that sentence coming from a Republican President. I don't want it coming from a Democratic President. I don't want Americans cheering it from either side. There ought to be a line somewhere beyond politics.
Surely the destruction of an American city is on the other side of it.
