Gavin Newsom establishes himself as Democrats’ chief social media troll
All it took was eight minutes and 40 seconds and a firehose of memes for Gov. Gavin Newsom to vault himself to the front of the previously necrotic resistance movement against the White House.
In a fiery speech Tuesday evening, Newsom, wearing his usual navy suit and flanked by California and U.S. flags, stared into a camera and lambasted President Donald Trump’s deployment of the military to suppress protests of deportation raids in Los Angeles.
“When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state in this nation,” he said, reading a prepared speech, a rarity for the dyslexic governor. “California may be first – but it clearly won’t end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next. Democracy is under assault before our eyes – this moment we’ve feared has arrived.”
Almost immediately, the plaudits poured in, cheering the governor for assuming the role of a wartime leader and calling out what many see as the beginnings of an authoritarian takeover. Hours beforehand, Trump told cheering soldiers at Fort Bragg in North Carolina that the White House would “liberate” Los Angeles and pledged to meet protesters of this weekend’s planned military parade in Washington, D.C., with brute force.
It’s unclear how long the goodwill will last, but Newsom and his administration appear to be basking in the feud for now. The Democratic Party posted a glowing shot of Newsom daring border czar Tom Homan to arrest him, news outlets analyzed the predicted impact on Newsom’s suspected presidential ambitions, and liberal influencers declared Newsom had “destroyed” his critics.
And his already chronically-online press office has been in overdrive. On Wednesday, it mocked critics like Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and conservative actor Jon Voight and has been posting a steady stream of AI-generated memes of Trump’s social media posts in the voice of Star Wars villain Emperor Palpatine, a strategy Sacramento political consultant Mike Madrid called “on (expletive) point.”
“This is the first time I’m seeing Democrats fight back,” said Madrid, a Republican who opposes Trump. “You’re not dealing with guys who fight fair. There’s no negotiating, no compromising with this guy (Trump).”
Newsom’s previous attempt to fact-check Trump during January’s wildfires fell flat as misinformation ran rampant on social media.
Madrid previously said that the governor’s much-discussed podcast was not a pivot to the center as some suspected but instead the a real-time effort to break into a new media sphere dominated by the right and corral the Democrats into adopting a more pugilistic and irreverent stance since their shellacking in the 2024 election.
“He’s building capacity,” Madrid said Wednesday. “No Democratic consultant gets that. You need reach, you need to build a megaphone. You want Charlie Kirk taking you on, you want Sean Hannity taking you on, you want JD Vance taking you on, and in their own tone.”
Days before the federal government’s incursion upon Los Angeles, Newsom was taking heat from allies in the Legislature and healthcare industry for his remarks on trans athletes and for wanting to slash Planned Parenthood funding and pause Medi-Cal expansion for undocumented residents to bridge a $12 billion gap in the state budget.
Those critics were largely quiet Wednesday, even as some advocacy groups planned rallies pushing back against proposed budget cuts.
This story was originally published June 11, 2025 at 12:56 PM.
