According to Grok, Gavin and the rest are full of shit.
Grok-
No. Trump did not mean the United States should destroy Los Angeles or San Diego. Newsom is selling the worst possible reading of a sloppy line, not what the rest of the speech was about.
At a rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, on October 5, Trump was talking about the Iran war and gas prices being a bit high. PolitiFact and the Rev transcript record it this way:
“And again, remember with the war, it’s just artificial. It’s a little bit high. It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take, let it, 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 gonna be over very soon.”
He then went straight back to gas prices coming down when the war ends.
The White House said he meant U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran had not been stopped, and that the higher pump price is the small cost of that.
FactCheck.org called the wording confusing, but said the more plausible reading is that he was defending the war as the way to stop Iran from being able to hit an American city, not inviting an attack.
Newsom’s post says an American president is talking about Los Angeles and San Diego being “taken out,” and asks where Congress is. In an earlier post he wrote that Trump is “saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego,” and called him deranged and dangerous. He also ordered the State Threat Assessment Center to watch for foreign actors treating the remarks as an invitation.
That is a distortion. Trump did say the words “let them take out Los Angeles” and “let them take out San Diego.” The crowd cheered. The line is careless and easy to clip. It is not an order, a policy, or a request that Iran hit those cities. Newsom cut off the sentences about gas prices and “keeping our country safe,” then added the claim that Trump wants foreign enemies to do it.
The National Guard and Marines line is a separate fight from 2025 over federal deployments during immigration enforcement. It has nothing to do with bombing California cities.