‘A Small Price to Pay’: Trump Admits the Iran War Is Raising Fuel and Fertilizer Prices — Then Says ‘Let ’Em Take Out Los Angeles’

In a speech in Nebraska on October 5, Trump turned to what the Iran war is costing Americans at the pump and on the farm.

“It’s a little high because of the war,” he said of prices for fuel and fertilizer. “It’s a small price to pay. A small price to pay to keep the world safe, to keep our country safe.”

Then he kept going. “They could take out a city. Let ’em take out Los Angeles, let ’em take out San Diego.”

He did not say who “they” were.

The Reaction

The remark landed in California within hours. Los Angeles and San Diego are the state’s two largest cities.

• Gov. Gavin Newsom called Trump unhinged and dangerous on X. He sent the National Guard and Marines to occupy California, Newsom wrote, and is now saying foreign enemies should take out LA and San Diego.
• Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the president had suggested a foreign government attack her city, and that remarks targeting it are dangerous and could threaten residents’ safety.
• San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said his city is not “a small price to pay” and told Trump to leave it out of his reckless war talk.
• Jim Desmond, a Republican running for a California House seat, said he strongly disagreed: no American city can be sacrificed.

The White House answered on X. Trump was talking about the Iranian threat, it said: had Iran not been stopped from getting a nuclear weapon, American cities would have been at risk. It accused the media of inventing the controversy with no basis in reality.

The Admission Before the Line

The Los Angeles line is the headline. The sentence before it is the news.

Through September, Trump described rising fuel costs as someone else’s doing. When diesel hit a record $6.23 a gallon, he said prices were high “because of the Russia-Ukraine war, not Iran.” On October 2 he promised oil would fall “the moment the war ends,” right after the midterms.

In Nebraska he said it plainly: prices are high because of the war, and Americans should accept that as the cost of security.

Fertilizer is the word to notice. A large share of the world’s traded urea and ammonia comes from Gulf producers whose exports run through the Strait of Hormuz, and Hormuz traffic has been running at about a third of pre-war volume. Nitrogen fertilizer is one of the biggest costs on a corn farm. Saying “a small price to pay” about fertilizer, in Nebraska, after a growing season paid for with war-inflated inputs, is a political admission the campaign had avoided. It confirms that the war’s costs are landing on the farm states that decide several close races, and it tells voters the administration accepts those costs rather than plans to remove them before November. The LA line made it worse by attaching the same “price” logic to American lives.

The Case for the White House Reading

Trump’s argument is that preventing an Iranian bomb is worth higher prices now, and that an Iran with nuclear weapons could threaten a US city. Read that way, “let ’em take out Los Angeles” is a clumsy description of the danger the war is meant to prevent, not an invitation. He did not name Iran in the sentence, and the White House says the meaning was clear in context. Presidents have long framed wartime costs as sacrifices worth making.