Alexei Koseff
CalMatters
Gov. Gavin Newsom finally got the showdown with President Donald Trump that he was asking for.
Their carefully calibrated truce, forged in the wake of January’s devastating wildfires across Los Angeles, appeared to implode over the weekend of June 7, 2025 when Trump sent the California National Guard into the city against Newsom’s wishes to quell immigration enforcement protests.
Newsom’s furious, at times vitriolic, response — comparing Trump to a dictator and calling him a “stone cold liar” for supposedly misrepresenting a phone call between them — harkens back to the immediate aftermath of the November election, when the governor was poised to assume national leadership in the resistance to the second Trump administration. Just two days after Trump’s re-election, Newsom practically invited a confrontation with the president by announcing a special legislative session to set aside funding for litigation against the federal government.
That provocation has come to fruition seven months later with troops in the streets and a pending court challenge 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 told a reporter during an interview Sunday night 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 with his open defiance, even sending a fundraising email Sunday morning about the National Guard deployment. The posturing nevertheless puts both the governor and his state at increasing risk of reprisal.
Matt Rodriguez, a longtime Democratic consultant who has worked in state and national politics, said it’s tough to challenge the president, because he holds most of the cards and has a tendency to whack back twice as hard.
“I just haven’t seen someone come out aggressive against Trump where it works,” Rodriguez said. “It’s a little bit like getting into a brick fight with the owner of the brickyard.”
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Trump threatens to arrest Newsom
Trump, who was already reportedly considering broad funding cuts to California, said Monday that he supports arresting Newsom for his handling of the protests.
“I would do it,” the president told reporters on the south lawn of the White House. “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 House did not respond to emailed questions about Newsom’s criticism, if it would have any impact on federal aid to rebuild after the Los Angeles wildfires, or whether Trump still believes he can work with the governor going forward.
Just four months ago, the two men embraced on the tarmac at LAX as Trump arrived in Los Angeles to tour the fire zone. The brief but warm greeting, where Trump promised to “take care of things,” seemed to reset their tense relationship.
Newsom followed up by traveling to Washington, D.C. to meet with the president in the Oval Office and lobby for federal assistance. Trump ceased referring to the governor as “Newscum” and pledged that an “L.A. fire fix” was coming.
The peace could not hold forever. In late April, Newsom sued to stop Trump’s sweeping new tariffs, though he said at the time that he was trying to maintain his connection to the president and avoid fights that were merely virtue signaling, which would invite a negative reaction.
As the weeks wore on, Newsom became more engaged in promoting California’s nearly two dozen lawsuits against the federal government, and he abandoned his strategy of criticizing the Trump administration while avoiding mentioning Trump himself. The president returned to calling the governor “Newscum” as they faced off over a transgender high school athlete last month and he has repeatedly used the term online when posting about the protests in Los Angeles. When CNN reported Friday that Trump was preparing a large-scale cancellation of federal grants for California, Newsom suggested the state should stop paying taxes.
But this incident marked a clear public rupture, with Newsom lobbing some of his harshest denunciations on record at the president. In a series of media interviews, the governor repeatedly said Trump’s federalization of the California National Guard was authoritarian, blamed him for inflaming violence to distract from his “disastrous presidency” and expressed doubts about his mental fitness.
The governor’s office continued to repost excerpts from those interviews on his social media accounts throughout the day Monday, alongside flippant comebacks to Republican critics. A spokesperson for the governor declined to discuss his shift in approach for dealing with Trump, though Newsom himself downplayed the potential consequences to Fox LA.
“Poking the bear? Are you kidding?” he said. “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 looks to divert focus during bad news cycle
Dan Schnur, a former Republican communications strategist who now teaches at UC Berkeley, Pepperdine University and the University of Southern California, said it’s possible that Trump could use their clash as an excuse to withhold wildfire aid or otherwise punish California.
But the president was clearly itching for a brawl to shake up a brutal news cycle focused on his deficit-enhancing tax and spending plan and his falling out with adviser Elon Musk, Schnur added, and there’s not much Newsom could have done to pacify him because Trump wanted to make an example of California.
“If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to want a glass of milk,” Schnur said.
Meanwhile, Newsom’s tenacious repudiation of Trump could further burnish his reputation 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 said. “Newsom is daring Trump to arrest him.”
The longer the turmoil in Los Angeles goes on, however, the greater the risk to Newsom. Rodriguez warned that if the situation erupts into sustained skirmishes between law enforcement and protestors, with images of rioting and vandalism broadcast around the world, it would undercut the more politically moderate character that Newsom has begun cultivating.
“There’s a ticking time bomb,” Rodriguez said. “Chaos is just never a good slogan for an elected official, no matter the reason.”
Newsom seemed aware of that conundrum of that fateful weekend, as he took pains to condemn the destruction of personal property and express his admiration for the National Guard amid his extensive Trump bashing. He even offered a small olive branch to the president, vowing to continue assisting federal immigration authorities with deporting immigrants released from the California prison system.
“I am not sitting here arguing for criminals in our backyard,” he told Fox LA. “Of course we believe in immigration rules and laws.”
