The White House And Legacy Media Are Gaslighting Us About What Trump Said About LA And San Diego [Op-Ed]

The moment President Donald Trump said to a laughing and cheering MAGA crowd, ” Let ’em take out Los Angeles, let ’em take out San Diego,” in reference to Iran, we all knew all of the Trump whisperers were going to come out of the woodwork and explain that what he said is actually not what he said. We knew they were going to “you’re taking him out of context” us to death. And we knew whatever excuse they came up with would be lazy, implausible, and a display of thoughtless gaslighting.

So, what did the MAGA propaganda machine muster up for a lame justification for their messiah’s behavior this time?

“The media freakout over President Trump’s comments is not rooted in reality,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung posted Tuesday, in response to the backlash. “He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped.”

Yeah — GTFOH

First of all, Trump never “clearly” states anything. This is a man who rambles incomprehensibly, “weaves” from topic to topic, and has never been coherent for more than two consecutive sentences.

But what are we to believe here, that the man who has lied about crime in these same cities to justify sending the military to them, targeted their elections with his election fraud propaganda, and has repeatedly accused their leadership of being enemies of the United States, suddenly has Los Angeles’ and San Diego’s best interests at heart? After all, Cheung didn’t bother explaining why the president mentioned those two cities specifically, if not to be malicious.

What’s crazier is that even CNN — one of the three media outlets Trump tried to ban from the White House because he didn’t like their reporting — has granted him the same lame defense, saying he “clearly” was not talking about Iran attacking these cities, but, in the same line of defense, saying the president’s “incoherence” was the reason for the confusion behind it.

So, which one is it? Did Trump speak “clearly,” or incoherently?

Hell, CNN even acknowledged that Trump “has repeatedly spoken about withholding disaster aid from states that vote against his party,” that he has “demonstrated some indifference to blue states,” and that “his Energy Department recently admitted in court that it canceled clean energy grants ‘based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state.’”

But now, he wants to protect them from Iran, and they’re being super ungrateful about it, right?

Mind you, this is the same administration that investigated and moved to indict FBI Director James Comey for posting an image of seashells arranged to read, “8647.”

It’s the same administration that investigated and tried to indict  Sen. Mark Kelly and the other five Democratic lawmakers whom Trump accused of “seditious behavior” that was “punishable by death” all because they advised military officers of their duty to refuse any unlawful orders given by the president, who is consistently being told by federal judges that what he’s doing with military personnel is unlawful.

Were we taking the president out of context then, too?

When former  White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is now set to be Fox News’ newest blonde, carbon-copy contributor after resigning from her position, said on Fox News that “the Democrat Party’s main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals,” did she also simply misspeak?

Or how about this week, when Trump called for reporters from the New York Times and other media outlets to be “arrested” over their coverage of his rally in Ohio, just because they reported how many empty seats there were in the building? Out of context? He didn’t really say that? We’re all just tripping? It’s just more TDS?

Trump is an impulsive man-child who can’t step on a stage or behind a keyboard without damning Democrats, democratic cities, and those who live in democratic cities. It doesn’t really matter if he was literally urging Iran to bomb them or not — he said what he said with malicious intent to those cities, using rhetoric that was “clearly” malicious in its intent.

He said what he said, we heard what we heard, and unlike MAGA apologists and legacy media, we don’t grade this president on a sliding curve. We don’t move the goalposts everywhere we need to move them to block out what’s right in front of us.

That’s not accountability; it’s enabling a man who proves every hour on the hour that he does not belong in the White House. Period.

SEE ALSO:

Trump Says Iran Can ‘Take Out’ Los Angeles And San Diego [Op-Ed]

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