Monday night in Grand Island, Nebraska, President Trump was explaining to a rally crowd why gas costs more right now. The war with Iran has pushed prices up, and he told them it was worth it.

"With the war it's just artificial, it's a little bit high," he said. "It's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They could take out a city. Let 'em take out Los Angeles. Let 'em take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay, and it's going to be over with very soon."

"They" is Iran. The war is about one thing: making sure Tehran never gets a nuclear weapon. Trump's point was that you can pay a little more at the pump, or you can let Iran build a weapon that wipes out an American city. That's the trade critics of the war are proposing without saying so, and he described it in the bluntest terms he could find.

By Tuesday, a different version was everywhere.

"After sending the National Guard and Marines to occupy California, Donald Trump is now saying our foreign enemies should 'take out' Los Angeles and San Diego," Gavin Newsom posted. "He is deranged and dangerous."

Newsom quoted three words. He skipped "keeping our country safe," and he skipped "They could take out a city," the sentence that tells you who "they" are and why it matters.

"HE DID NOT SAY BOMB LOS ANGELES," commentator Ramin Ekhtiar shot back. "Gavin cut the clip in half and told 10 million people the President just offered their city to Iran."

The two Democratic mayors joined in. "The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives," said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria went further: "San Diego is not collateral damage. We are not expendable. And we are never a 'small price to pay.'"

Trump never called San Diego a small price to pay. He said that about gas prices, twice, in the same breath.

By Tuesday morning, the story had made it onto ABC's "Good Morning America."

Trump's team answered in fewer words. "No, he didn't, you buffoons," the White House's Rapid Response 47 account posted. "He was saying the U.S. is fighting to STOP Iran from having the ability to take out LA and San Diego with a nuclear weapon — which they would if they had the chance."

The playbook is familiar by now. Find the most shocking few seconds of a Trump speech, cut the sentence before it, and post it with an outraged caption. By the time the full clip catches up, millions of people have already seen the version with the context cut out.

This time the full clip caught up within hours. The Rapid Response account, independent commentators and the unedited video were all circulating before most of the national press had finished writing up Newsom's version. A misleading clip used to own a whole news cycle. It doesn't last as long as it used to.

The argument Trump was making is one every American president since 1945 has made in some form. Some costs are worth paying to keep a hostile regime from getting the bomb. A few cents at the pump is one of them. A city is not.

Here's the full passage, so you can decide for yourself:

"It's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They could take out a city. Let 'em take out Los Angeles. Let 'em take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay, and it's going to be over with very soon."