The Context for Trump’s ‘Take Out’ Los Angeles, San Diego Remarks

Filed 1h ago · Via FactCheck.org · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

The Path of the Goblin King

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Rijksmuseum · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

President Trump told a Nebraska crowd that Iran could 'take out' Los Angeles and San Diego, prompting Democrats including Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Bernie Sanders to accuse him of either inviting an attack or shrugging off mass casualties. Newsom called the remarks 'dangerous, if not treasonous' and said California would monitor for foreign actors who might take the comments as an invitation.

FactCheck.org examined the full transcript and concluded Trump was more likely arguing that higher gas prices are a worthwhile tradeoff for preventing Iran from threatening U.S. cities with nuclear weapons, a point he has made in similar language before. The White House pointed to a tweet from communications director Steven Cheung calling the backlash 'not rooted in reality.'

Some in the crowd cheered when Trump said 'let them take out Los Angeles,' though Trump did not appear to react to the cheering. Whether the sentence means what it says or what the White House later insisted it meant is, apparently, a matter for forensic transcript analysis.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

When the only way to understand what the president meant is to cross-reference six months of old speeches about gas prices, the problem isn't the fact-checkers, it's the speech. A man running the country ought to be able to say a thing once and have it land the way he meant it. Instead we get a verbal corn maze and a communications director standing at the exit yelling that everyone who got lost is the real idiot.

Source: Read the original at FactCheck.org → Scored: The Path of the Goblin King · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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