The White House has stated that Trump’s comments about Iran “taking out Los Angeles and San Diego” were taken out of context. Here is his exact quote, with context:

I want to see a tremendous victory. You want to see a tremendous victory because it verifies all the things we did. 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 them take out Los Angeles; let them take out San Diego. That’s — this is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon. It’s essentially almost over with.

And they might keep going a little long. You know, they always say they have a big threshold for pain. They need it. Let me tell you, they need it. But it’s going to end very soon. And it’ll end one way or the other. And your gas and your gasoline and all of the things.

And don’t forget, we also took on a country known as Venezuela. They never talk about that. They never talk about Venezuela. And we’re taking in hundreds of millions of barrels of oil every week. We’re pouring oil. We’re pouring oil into this country like nobody’s ever seen before.

There was laughter and applause after this statement at a rally in Nebraska. Seriously? How can any human being applaud this?

On Tuesday morning, the White House’s communications director, Steven Cheung, responded:

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.

You judge for yourself.

I live in San Diego. About 16 million people live in the San Diego and Los Angeles Metropolitan areas combined. That’s 4.6 percent of our nation’s population. We generate about 5% of our nation’s GDP. There are currently about 115,000 active-duty military personnel stationed in San Diego County, representing approximately 8.5% of the total active-duty military population in the United States.

Remember when Congress grilled Hillary Clinton about Benghazi in 2013 and then again on October 22, 2015, lasting for 11 hours? It was one of the longest congressional hearings in history. I clearly remember the outrage of the right-wing media at the time because “four American’s lost their lives.”

Four. And they were ready to crucify Hillary Clinton and called for locking her up.

It is truly frightening to me when the sitting president can make such a statement and our guardrails don’t hold up. If this lackadaisical attitude about the lives of millions of Americans and military staff does not meet the threshold of removing him from office, clearly nothing ever will, for this president, and any future president.

Are we doomed?