California Gov. Gavin Newsom is hitting Donald Trump with an attack the president and his base know all too well: the president’s mental acuity.
Trump and Newsom have squared off over the federalization and deployment of the National Guard to California in the wake of the anti-deportation protests — and some unrest — in Los Angeles. On an episode of “The Daily” posted Thursday, the Democrat gave a play-by-play of his conversations with Trump last weekend — ones that the two sides have offered conflicting accounts on.
They had a Saturday morning discussion, the two men say, in which Trump purports to have brought up the National Guard. But Newsom decried that account as false. “He lied, on my mother and dad’s grave,” Newsom said on The New York Times podcast. “I don’t mess around when I say this. He lied. Stone cold liar.”
Once Trump began fabricating parts of their conversation later that day, Newsom alleged, it started “to disturb me on a different level that maybe he actually believed he said those things,” he said.
“He’s not all there,” the governor added.
The new line of attack from Newsom, who is widely considered a top contender for president in 2028, comes after he told Fox LA earlier this week that Trump “is not the same person that I dealt with just four years ago, and he’s incapable now of even a train of thought. He’s making things up.”
Trump and his supporters repeatedly attacked then-President Joe Biden’s mental fitness throughout the 2024 campaign and the early months of Trump’s second administration.
The president has relentlessly criticized Newsom — including reviving his nickname of “Gavin Newscum” — in recent days.
“Los Angeles was safe and sound for the last two nights,” Trump posted Thursday on Truth Social. “Governor Gaven [sic] NewScum had totally lost control of the situation. He should be saying THANK YOU for saving his ass, instead of trying to justify his mistakes and incompetence!!!”