By Alexei KoseffCalMatters
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Gov. Gavin Newsom lastly received the showdown with President Donald Trump that he was asking for.
Their fastidiously calibrated truce, cast within the wake of January’s devastating wildfires throughout Los Angeles, appeared to implode over the weekend when Trump despatched the California Nationwide Guard into town in opposition to Newsom’s needs to quell immigration enforcement protests.
Newsom’s livid, at occasions vitriolic, response — evaluating Trump to a dictator and calling him a “stone cold liar” for supposedly misrepresenting a telephone name between them — harkens again to the speedy aftermath of the November election, when the governor was poised to assume nationwide management within the resistance to the second Trump administration. Simply two days after Trump’s re-election, Newsom virtually invited a confrontation with the president by asserting a particular legislative session to put aside funding for litigation in opposition to the federal authorities.
That provocation has come to fruition seven months later with troops within the streets and a pending court docket problem to the president’s constitutional authority.
“Many of you called me out as, ‘It’s too extreme. Shouldn’t you be working with Donald Trump during his transition?’ when I called that special session,” Newsom informed a reporter throughout an interview Sunday night time with Fox LA. “We knew something would happen. But I gotta say, I never expected Donald Trump to do this.”
Newsom has rallied Californians and his liberal base together with his open defiance, even sending a fundraising e-mail Sunday morning in regards to the Nationwide Guard deployment. The posturing nonetheless places each the governor and his state at rising danger of reprisal.
Matt Rodriguez, a longtime Democratic marketing consultant who has labored in state and nationwide politics, mentioned it’s powerful to problem the president, as a result of he holds many of the playing cards and tends to whack again twice as exhausting.
“I just haven’t seen someone come out aggressive against Trump where it works,” Rodriguez mentioned. “It’s a little bit like getting into a brick fight with the owner of the brickyard.”
Trump threatens to arrest Newsom
Trump, who was already reportedly contemplating broad funding cuts to Californiamentioned Monday that he helps arresting Newsom for his dealing with of the protests.
“I would do it,” the president informed reporters on the south garden of the White Home. “Gavin likes the publicity, but I think it would be a great thing. He’s done a terrible job. Look, I like Gavin Newsom, he’s a nice guy, but he’s grossly incompetent.”
The White Home didn’t reply to emailed questions on Newsom’s criticism, if it might have any impression on federal assist to rebuild after the Los Angeles wildfires, or whether or not Trump nonetheless believes he can work with the governor going ahead.
Simply 4 months in the past, the 2 males embraced on the tarmac at LAX as Trump arrived in Los Angeles to tour the hearth zone. The transient however heat greeting, the place Trump promised to “take care of things,” appeared to reset their tense relationship.
Newsom adopted up by touring to Washington, D.C. to satisfy with the president within the Oval Workplace and foyer for federal help. Trump ceased referring to the governor as “Newscum” and pledged that an “L.A. fire fix” was coming.
The peace couldn’t maintain eternally. In late April, Newsom sued to cease Trump’s sweeping new tariffs, although he mentioned on the time that he was attempting to keep up his connection to the president and keep away from fights that have been merely advantage signalingwhich might invite a damaging response.
Because the weeks wore on, Newsom turned extra engaged in selling California’s almost two dozen lawsuits in opposition to the federal authorities, and he deserted his technique of criticizing the Trump administration whereas avoiding mentioning Trump himself. The president returned to calling the governor “Newscum” as they confronted off over a transgender highschool athlete final month and he has repeatedly used the time period on-line when posting in regards to the protests in Los Angeles. When CNN reported Friday that Trump was getting ready a large-scale cancellation of federal grants for California, Newsom urged the state ought to cease paying taxes.
However this weekend marked a transparent public rupture, with Newsom lobbing a few of his harshest denunciations on file on the president. In a collection of media interviews, the governor repeatedly mentioned Trump’s federalization of the California Nationwide Guard was authoritarian, blamed him for inflaming violence to distract from his “disastrous presidency” and expressed doubts about his psychological health.
The governor’s workplace continued to repost excerpts from these interviews on his social media accounts all through the day Monday, alongside flippant comebacks to Republican critics. A spokesperson for the governor declined to debate his shift in strategy for coping with Trump, although Newsom himself downplayed the potential penalties to Fox LA.
“Poking the bear? Are you kidding?” he mentioned. “You mean standing up for principles, standing up for honor and decency, standing up for the rule of law. Poking the bear? Come on.”
Trump appears to divert focus throughout unhealthy information cycle
Dan Schnur, a former Republican communications strategist who now teaches at UC Berkeley, Pepperdine College and the College of Southern California, mentioned it’s attainable that Trump may use their conflict as an excuse to withhold wildfire assist or in any other case punish California.
However the president was clearly itching for a brawl to shake up a brutal information cycle targeted on his deficit-enhancing tax and spending plan and his falling out with adviser Elon Musk, Schnur added, and there’s not a lot Newsom may have accomplished to pacify him as a result of Trump needed to make an instance of California.
“If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to want a glass of milk,” Schnur mentioned.
In the meantime, Newsom’s tenacious repudiation of Trump may additional burnish his popularity as a top-tier Democratic contender if he plans to run for president in 2028.
“Some potential candidates are giving speeches. Others are introducing legislation,” Schnur mentioned. “Newsom is daring Trump to arrest him.”
The longer the turmoil in Los Angeles goes on, nonetheless, the higher the chance to Newsom. Rodriguez warned that if the state of affairs erupts into sustained skirmishes between regulation enforcement and protestors, with photographs of rioting and vandalism broadcast around the globe, it might undercut the extra politically average character that Newsom has begun cultivating.

“There’s a ticking time bomb,” Rodriguez mentioned. “Chaos is just never a good slogan for an elected official, no matter the reason.”
Newsom appeared conscious of that conundrum this weekend, as he took pains to sentence the destruction of private property and specific his admiration for the Nationwide Guard amid his intensive Trump bashing. He even provided a small olive department to the president, vowing to proceed aiding federal immigration authorities with deporting immigrants launched from the California jail system.
“I am not sitting here arguing for criminals in our backyard,” he informed Fox LA. “Of course we believe in immigration rules and laws.”
This text was initially revealed on CalMatters and was republished underneath the Artistic Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.