1. United States
2. S.C.
3. Letter

I don't care how the White House tries to explain that. No president should talk that way. Los Angeles and San Diego aren't talking points. They're American cities, home to millions of American citizens: families, kids, service members, veterans, firefighters, nurses, people going to work every day. The President owes them the same protection he owes anyone here in South Carolina, or in Nebraska or Texas or anywhere else. He isn't just the president of the people who voted for him or the states that tend to support him. He's the President of the whole country. That shouldn't need saying, but apparently it does. We're already divided enough. People are sorting themselves by party, by region, by culture, and a president should be pushing against that, reminding us that being American is something we share no matter how we vote. Instead, casually talking about American cities being destroyed, and picking cities in a state he openly treats as a political enemy, feeds the idea that some Americans count less because of where they live or how they vote. That idea is poison. Maybe he meant it as a hypothetical, a warning about how dangerous Iran is. Fine. There are plenty of responsible ways for a Commander in Chief to talk about threats to American cities. "Let them take out Los Angeles" is not one of them. When a president talks about war and the safety of our own people, the whole world is listening, and his words carry real consequences. So I'm asking you, as my representative, to publicly reject this kind of rhetoric, whatever your party. This shouldn't be a Democrat or Republican thing. Surely everyone in Congress can agree that no American community should ever be treated as expendable by its own President. Disagreeing with California's politicians doesn't make the people who live there any less American, and it doesn't release the President from his duty to protect them. If we get to a point where it's normal to shrug at a president inviting a foreign enemy to destroy one of our cities, something has gone badly wrong. I'm a South Carolinian, and I'd feel exactly the same if he'd named Charleston or Columbia. The presidency is supposed to stand for the whole country, especially when our politics are at their ugliest. I expect the President to act like it, and I expect Congress to speak up when he doesn't. Please make it clear that the people of Los Angeles and San Diego, and every other American community, are Americans first, and that talking about their safety with this kind of contempt has no place in the presidency.