OMITTED

What the news leaves out.

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Trump promises bomb contingency plan if assassinated by Iran

7 sources · updated 2026-07-12
Left 14% Center 14% Right 71%
1 left · 1 center · 5 right

What happened

On Friday, July 10, 2026, President Donald Trump told the New York Post that he had left instructions for his administration if Iran assassinated him: "to just literally bomb them at levels that they've never seen before." He said Iran has had him on its kill list for years, tying the threat to his January 2020 order for the U.S. strike in Baghdad that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. The comments followed a Wall Street Journal report that Israel had shared intelligence with U.S. officials about a new Iranian assassination plan against Trump; Trump rejected that specific report, saying, "Israel came up with nothing," and neither Israeli nor Iranian officials publicly confirmed it. U.S. officials have long treated Iranian retaliation threats against Trump as a security issue, and the Justice Department announced in late 2024 that it had disrupted an alleged Iranian murder-for-hire plot targeting him before the 2024 presidential election. The remarks came while U.S. and Iranian officials were continuing negotiations, according to CBS News.
Omitted — what each side leaves out

Unpacked

Bloomberg’s contribution is essentially a programming tease: the title says Trump threats to “Decimate” Iran, but the body lists hosts and guests and contains no Trump quote, no assassination premise, no Post interview, and no Iran details. By contrast, Newsmax, OAN and Daily Caller all carry the operative Post quote: Trump has “left instructions” that “if anything happens” the U.S. should “literally bomb them at levels that they’ve never seen before.” That makes the right-leaning side much more complete on the core claim, while Bloomberg leaves out the concrete contingency plan entirely. The right-side outlets also differ sharply in caution. Newsmax frames the plot report as something Trump was “downplaying” and says The Wall Street Journal reported Israeli intelligence, while “Neither Israeli nor Iranian officials publicly confirmed the report.” Daily Caller calls it “alleged Israeli intelligence” and adds that the details were “neither clear nor vetted by the U.S.” OAN opens with “intelligence reports that Iran is intent on assassinating President Donald Trump,” a firmer formulation, and then adds graphic rally-poster details such as “WE WILL KILL TRUMP” and “Kill Trump.” The vocabulary escalates by outlet: Bloomberg’s title uses “Decimate”; Newsmax says Iran would be “Obliterated”; Daily Caller calls it a “contingency plan”; OAN leads with the advisers’ reported nickname, “Operation B**** Slap,” and says Iran has an “apparent thirst for Trump’s blood.” Those are not neutral synonyms for the same policy threat. One basic question goes unanswered everywhere: what authority or process would govern these “left instructions” if Trump were killed—who would execute them, and what limits would apply before bombing “at levels that they’ve never seen before”?
Bottom line

Bloomberg barely names the threat, while Newsmax, OAN and Daily Caller quote Trump’s “left instructions” line. Inside the right-leaning coverage, the biggest split is caution: Newsmax and Daily Caller flag unconfirmed or “neither clear nor vetted” intelligence, while OAN foregrounds “Operation B**** Slap.”

The Left View
The provided left-leaning coverage is limited, but Bloomberg frames the story around Trump’s threats to "Decimate" Iran rather than around the assassination threat alone. That framing puts emphasis on the scale and volatility of the promised response, especially because the statement came during ongoing U.S.-Iran diplomacy. The left-side presentation is less focused on proving the assassination threat and more focused on the implications of a president publicly describing a severe retaliatory bombing contingency.
The Right View
Right-leaning outlets frame Trump’s statement primarily as deterrence against a long-running Iranian threat, leaning on his claim that he has been "No. 1" on Iran’s list for years. Newsmax stresses that Trump downplayed the new Israeli-intelligence report while still presenting Iran as a persistent danger linked to Soleimani retaliation. OAN and the Daily Caller use more forceful framing, including the reported nickname "Operation B**** Slap," and portray the contingency plan as a hard-line warning rather than an escalation detached from context. Several right-leaning accounts also note that Trump said diplomatic contacts could continue, presenting military threat and negotiation as simultaneous tools.
Our Take (balanced)
The strongest left-side argument is that Trump’s own wording — "bomb them at levels that they've never seen before" — turns a genuine security concern into an unusually expansive public military threat at a time when negotiations are still underway. The strongest right-side argument is that the threat has deterrent logic because the danger is not hypothetical in the abstract: Trump connected it to Soleimani retaliation, and U.S. authorities previously announced an alleged Iranian plot targeting him. The central unresolved tension is whether making such a maximal retaliatory threat public makes assassination less likely by clarifying consequences, or makes U.S.-Iran escalation more likely when the newest intelligence claim remains unconfirmed publicly.

7 sources

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