GOV NEWSOM'S challenging and mocking of NOT MY pres drumpf / trump has not only been entertaining, it has also exposed the hypocrisy of the drumpf / trump-vance administration, the gop / greed over people-guardians of pedophilia-republican party and their magat cultist every time they complain about and attack Governor Newsom for using the same tactics they have been using. They don't want to accept that turnabout is fair play!!! KEEP ON ROCKIN THE FREE WORLD GOV NEWSOM, YOU ARE THE MAN THAT DRUMPF / TRUMP WILL NEVER BE!!!From the Washington Post...
Newsom won’t stop mocking Trump — and Trump keeps taking the bait
The California governor has seized attention and filled a leadership void like no other Democrat in the president’s second term in the White House.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has seized attention like no other Democrat in President Donald Trump’s second term as he works to position himself as a de facto head of the resistance in a leaderless party.
Influencers on both the left and the right have discussed Newsom online more than any other potential 2028 presidential contender since Trump’s inauguration, according to a Washington Post analysis. The attention has been driven by his response to immigration raids in Los Angeles, his efforts to counter a Republican redistricting push and, most recently, his mocking impersonations of Trump’s social media style.
Once intermittently cordial with Trump, the governor has embraced all-out warfare, taunting him daily in what his team calls a “flood the zone” strategy. Trump, in turn, has mentioned Newsom more than any other potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate since the start of his second term, according to a Post review of social media posts and emails.
The result: a remarkable back-and-forth between the president and the governor of the most populous state in the country that reached a low point last week. Trump posted multiple doctored videos of Newsom on social media, while the governor suggested Trump has dementia and pinned an unflattering photo of the president atop his official press account.
Many Democrats eager for direction are delighting in Newsom’s high-profile clashes and aggressive trolling of the president, though some in the party remain skeptical that a California liberal will be their best candidate in 2028.
“Democrats are so desperate for leadership right now that they’ll take anything they can get,” said Alex Hoffman, a Democratic strategist and donor adviser. “Gavin is filling a void.”
Other elected Democrats are also filling the vacuum, Hoffman argued. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has also positioned himself as a forceful foil to Trump and could find the spotlight as the administration sends National Guard troops to Chicago as soon as this month. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore has leaned into a fight with the president in recent weeks, as the White House took aim at D.C. and Baltimore.
But Newsom stood out over the summer to both Democrats and Republicans who are following the early 2028 buzz. He has put California at the center of the Democratic response to Trump’s push for mid-decade redistricting, asking the state’s voters to temporarily redraw their congressional map to counter new red seats with five new blue ones.
Trump has also directed an unusual amount of attention at Newsom: He has used his name 41 times in social media posts and emails since his inauguration — more than the 33 times he has mentioned Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), the 29 times he’s mentioned his former opponent, Kamala Harris, and the nine times he’s mentioned Pritzker. (The analysis does not include Trump’s use of nicknames: Many more Trump posts disparage Newsom as “Newscum.”)
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said Trump’s posts about Newsom are not a compliment, grouping the governor among other “stupid” things Trump posts about, like windmills and Rosie O’Donnell. “Newscum should spend more time trying to be a good Governor and less time embarrassing himself online,” she said.
Mike Madrid, a Republican political consultant who helped found the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said Newsom is the first Democrat he has seen try to fight Trump by echoing his tone and sucking up similar oxygen with constant pushback. That’s what the polarizing Lincoln Project set out to do years ago and hoped Democrats would emulate, Madrid said — “Somebody is finally doing it.”
He marveled at the California governor’s shift in posture since the Los Angeles fires early this year, when Newsom thanked Trump for coming to the state and said he looked forward to “working together.”
Newsom pushed back as Trump blamed the fires on his water management — an idea that water experts called unfounded. But his office’s efforts to fact-check Trump were muted compared with his pushback on the immigration raids this summer and, more recently, his full-blown taunts.
“The education of Gavin Newsom between the L.A. fires and ICE raids was monumental,” said Madrid, who is based in California.
Not every politician sees conflict as the best path for their constituents. Some Democratic governors — notably Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — have maintained a more cordial relationship with Trump as they try to protect their states’ interests and secure federal resources.
Brian Brokaw, a Democratic strategist and longtime adviser to Newsom, said the governor has worked with Trump over the years “when it’s mattered for California” but had no choice but to shift gears when Trump targeted the state.
“The ground really shifted” in their relationship with the ICE raids this summer, Brokaw said.
Trump deployed the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles in June amid protests of his immigration policy that at times grew violent. Trump said he was restoring order, while California officials accused him of inflaming a situation they could control on their own.
The president attacked Newsom as “grossly incompetent” and at one point suggested he should be arrested. Newsom called Trump “unhinged.”
“That’s an American president in 2025, threatening a political opponent who happens to be a sitting governor,” Newsom told The Post after Trump floated his arrest. “That’s not with precedent in modern times. That’s what we see around the globe in authoritarian regimes.”
Online chatter about Newsom spiked. Videos of his address to Californians posted on his official and personal X accounts were viewed more than 40 million times, according to the governor’s office. Newsom sued over the National Guard deployment, leading a federal judge to rule last week that it was unconstitutional.
Last month, Newsom ramped up another strategy: mimicry.
His office tried out its first all-caps Trumpian post on X on Aug. 11: “DONALD TRUMP, IF YOU DO NOT STAND DOWN, WE WILL BE FORCED TO LEAD AN EFFORT TO REDRAW THE MAPS IN CA TO OFFSET THE RIGGING OF MAPS IN RED STATES … THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!”
His team thought it would be a funny one-off experiment, they said. But then it got millions of views — and they kept going. Newsom’s official press office account gained more than half a million followers last month as the bit ramped up.
“WOW. THANK YOU! IT’S ALL FOR YOU — THE PEOPLE OF THE GREAT STATE OF CALIFORNIA!” read a Wednesday post sharing a fan’s depiction of an extra-buff Newsom in a “World’s Best Governor” shirt.
Newsom’s office says he is drawing on his years of consuming right-wing media. He joined Trump’s social media site, Truth Social, in 2022 and brought Fox News’s Sean Hannity to the governor’s mansion for an interview in 2023. The governor also drew attention — and Democratic backlash — early this year for inviting MAGA influencers including Stephen K. Bannon on his podcast.
Newsom, who is now floating his own Trump-like meme coin, says the copycat posts are meant to call attention to the president’s behavior and the corresponding lack of GOP outrage. He took note when some conservatives criticized his new Trumpian persona as unbefitting of a governor.
“What an admission,” he said in an interview with the liberal outlet MeidasTouch. “Where have they been, not asking Donald Trump this at every press conference?”
Asked last week about Newsom’s suggestion that Trump has dementia, Steven Cheung — the White House communications director known for his crude online insults — hit back with a statement suggesting Trump’s team would not be outdone.
“Gavin Newsom is a mongoloid who barely registers half a brain cell,” Cheung told The Post, using a term for people with Down syndrome that many find offensive, “which is telling because he can barely put together two words without looking like he soiled himself in public.”
Democratic strategist Brad Bannon said Newsom has been “the dominant national Democrat over the summer.” But that could change, he noted, when National Guard troops head to Chicago.
Patrick Svitek contributed to this report.
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