Trump’s LA and San Diego comments ‘dangerous, if not treasonous’, says Newsom – US politics live

• 11m ago

  Susan Collins distances herself from Trump in Maine debate

• 24m ago

  Trump's LA and San Diego comments 'dangerous, if not treasonous', say critics

Susan Collins, the Republican senator for Maine, pointedly distanced herself from Donald Trump in a televised debate with Democratic challenger Troy Jackson on Tuesday, as she sought to present an image of independence in a state that has voted against Trump three times.

Proclaiming herself as not the US president’s “favorite senator”, Collins made the highly unusual boast for a Republican that she had voted with Joe Biden, a Democrat, more than 90% of the time when he was president. She also emphasized her differences with her fellow Republicans, saying she voted against her own party more than any other senator.

Collins’ defensiveness came amid a determined onslaught from Jackson, 58, a veteran former state legislator who was getting his first chance to present himself to a broad audience since replacing Graham Platner as the Democratic candidate in a contest that could be vital to the party’s hopes of winning the Senate.

Platner, a former harbor master, was forced to withdraw from the race in July after facing sexual assault allegations, which he denied, leaving Democrats racing against the clock to replace a candidate who had built up momentum campaigning on a populist progressive platform.

Jackson painted Collins as a Trump loyalist, saying she voted with the president 96% of the time. He also doggedly focused on her 2018 vote for the conservative supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, tying it to the court’s subsequent overturning of Roe v Wade, which had for half a century guaranteed the national right to abortion.

“Tonight is about who you stand with when it matters,” Jackson said in a pithy opening statement. “Eight years ago today, Maine women went to DC and begged Senator Collins not to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, but she did it anyways.

“He helped overturn Roe v Wade, and today she says she has no regrets. Would you trust her to pick the next supreme court justice?”

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Donald Trump was accused of “dangerous, if not treasonous” behaviour after his comments suggesting he could “let [Iran] take out” Los Angeles or San Diego.

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has since directed the state’s emergency preparedness center to “actively monitor” possible threats to the state.

“Donald Trump’s remarks were dangerous – if not treasonous – putting a target on two of our biggest cities and one of America’s largest naval hubs,” Newsom said in a post on X, adding that the state’s threat-assessment center would be on heightened alert “in the event that foreign actors interpret the president’s remarks as an invitation to target California”.

The president has faced a chorus of condemnation from Democratic leaders in California after his comments at a rally in Nebraska on Monday night, which the White House has suggested were being taken out of context.

At the president’s rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, Trump claimed that high prices due to the war with Iran are a “small price to pay for keeping the world safe – keeping our country safe”.

He went on:

They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.

Xavier Becerra, the Democratic nominee for governor vying to succeed Newsom, said he wasn’t surprised by the president’s comments.

“Donald Trump is a known commodity – you know how he acts, you know how he behaves,” Becerra told reporters at a campaign event in Los Angeles on Tuesday. But he took a jab at Republicans who “profess that they should be the leaders of our state” but aren’t willing to “stand up to Donald Trump”.

Meanwhile, San Diego mayor Todd Gloria said in a statement that “the most fundamental responsibility of a president is to protect the American people - all of them.”

He added:

No American city, regardless of its politics or geography, should ever be described as expendable or an acceptable price to pay.

But the White House insisted that Trump was being willfully misinterpreted.

Steven Cheung, its director of communications, posted on X:

The media freakout over President Trump’s comments is not rooted in reality. He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped. America is safer because of the President. Iran has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money.

But one Republican House candidate, Jim Desmond, who is running in a competitive San Diego-based seat, pushed back.

“America must stand up to Iran and defend our interests, but the first responsibility of our commander in chief is to protect the American people and our homeland,” Desmond, a former mayor of San Marcos, said in a statement.

In other developments:

• The Cook Political Report has revised its predictions for the November midterm elections, saying “A Senate Majority is Squarely in Democrats’ Sights”. Cook amended its prediction for the Kansas Senate race from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up” – a shocker for a state where no Democrat has won a Senate election since 1932.

• Donald Trump announced a massive new shipyard, which will be funded by a combination of federal and private dollars, at Tradepoint Atlantic in Sparrows Point. Anduril Industries, which is owned by Trump’s friend and donor Palmer Luckey, plans to invest $3.7bn in the shipyard and the US Navy will contribute an additional $2.9bn.

• The USS Lincoln will dock in San Diego tomorrow, completing a nearly year-long deployment that sparked controversy over living conditions aboard the aircraft carrier as it supported military operations in Iran. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth is expected to greet the crew when they arrive.

• Trump ordered the FBI to investigate protesters in Los Angeles who were demonstrating against the president’s immigration crackdown, according to a whistleblower complaint that was submitted to the Senate judiciary committee. Jill Fields, a former supervisory intelligence analyst in the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, made the complaint following the federal response to anti-ICE demonstrations around the city’s federal buildings, and in residential area, early last year.