Impeachment on the table after Trump 'jokes' Iran can bomb LA or San Diego: analysts

What happened

RawStory reports that President Donald Trump told a Monday rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, that Iran could “take out” Los Angeles or San Diego while he defended the costs of war as a small price for national and global safety. The crowd applauded, according to the report.

On Tuesday’s “Morning Joe,” MS NOW hosts rejected efforts to excuse the remark as a joke. Joe Scarborough said comparable comments by another president would produce immediate impeachment demands. The reporting identifies no formal impeachment effort, introduced resolution, or commitment from any member of Congress; “impeachment on the table” describes the hosts’ argument about the response such rhetoric would ordinarily provoke.

The power behind the words

The speaker was not a comedian, pundit, or powerless provocateur. He was the president, entrusted with military authority and the protection of every American city—including cities whose voters may oppose him.

That institutional power is what makes the remark politically significant. A president discussing war costs chose mass destruction in two American cities as his punch line. Whether he intended a literal policy statement is not established here. What is established is that he treated millions of residents as rhetorically expendable while selling the public on the burdens of war.

“Just joking” is the escape hatch

Calling the comment a joke does not explain it. It shields the president from accountability while preserving the political function of the remark: identifying disfavored places as disposable and inviting supporters to enjoy the provocation.

The defense also misdirects scrutiny toward the audience’s interpretation. Americans are asked whether they are too literal, too offended, or insufficiently familiar with Trump’s style. The relevant decision belongs to Trump. He selected Los Angeles and San Diego, named their destruction, and did so from the presidency’s platform.

Impeachment without impeachers

RawStory’s framing overstates what its own account demonstrates. Scarborough argued that such language would trigger impeachment calls under a different president; the article does not report that lawmakers had begun an impeachment proceeding or even issued the call highlighted in the headline.

That distinction matters. Cable-news condemnation is not congressional action. Congress holds the constitutional power to pursue impeachment, and the story offers no evidence that its members used it. Turning a hypothetical comparison into an impending institutional response makes outrage look like accountability when no accountable institution has moved.

Selective belonging

Scarborough’s comparison points to the larger pattern: partisan geography has become a license to rank Americans by political worth. Los Angeles and San Diego are not abstractions. They are populous American communities, yet Trump’s formulation cast their destruction as an acceptable cost in a performance about national safety.

The contradiction is the point. “Keeping our country safe” cannot coherently include shrugging at the annihilation of parts of that country. This rhetoric narrows the nation to the president’s favored constituencies and relegates everyone else to targets, burdens, or props.

The system rewards the provocation

The institutional failure extends beyond one remark. Trump supplies the spectacle, defenders convert it into humor, television converts it into an impeachment debate, and Congress—at least in the reporting provided—remains absent. Each layer displaces attention from the one concrete fact: a sitting president publicly invoked the destruction of American cities while justifying war’s costs.

The systemic lesson is not that every grotesque statement automatically becomes an impeachable offense. It is that concentrated power now travels with a mature machinery for dissolving responsibility. The president provokes, allies minimize, media inflate hypothetical consequences, and the institutions with actual authority avoid appearing in the frame.

Thanks to Raw Story

Source: Impeachment on the table after Trump ‘jokes’ Iran can bomb LA or San Diego: analysts