The political rivalry between California Governor Gavin Newsom and President Donald Trump has exploded into a full-blown, headline-grabbing feud, playing out as much on social media as in the halls of government. Over the past weeks, the two leaders have traded increasingly personal barbs, with Newsom leveraging humor and digital savvy to lampoon Trump, while the president has responded with characteristic bravado and derision. The result? A spectacle that’s as much about political theater as it is about policy, with each side seeking to outmaneuver the other in the court of public opinion.
The latest round began in earnest on August 26, 2025, during a high-profile White House cabinet meeting. According to CBS News and The Daily Beast, President Trump accused Governor Newsom of refusing to allow critical water supplies to flow into California during the state’s wildfire crises. Trump claimed, “We sent hundreds of millions of gallons of water per day into the Pacific Ocean. They turn a valve. The valve heads out. We turned the valve back. I actually had to do it using force.” He directed his remarks at "Gavin Newscum," his favored nickname for the governor, and urged him to “turn the rest of the water on.”
Newsom’s response was swift and pointed. He reposted a clip of Trump’s comments on X (formerly Twitter) and added a screenshot of his own interaction with Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok. Newsom’s question to Grok was simple: “Do people with dementia repeat false things over and over again?” Grok’s answer was unequivocal: “Yes, people with dementia can repeat false statements or beliefs, a behavior often linked to memory impairments and cognitive changes. This can manifest as confabulation, where they create or repeat false memories to fill gaps in recollection, or perseveration, where they fixate on a particular idea or statement.”
The exchange quickly made waves, with the White House firing back in a statement to The Daily Beast, accusing Newsom of “distracting from his terrible handling of the California wildfires that President Trump had to come in and clean up.” As the brush fires scorched tens of thousands of acres in January, fire chiefs confirmed they were faced with a new challenge: depleted water supplies and low water pressure. Yet, as experts told CBS News, Trump’s claims about water management didn’t hold up. There is no water supply from the Pacific Northwest that connects to California’s systems, and the water Trump ordered released from Lake Kaweah and Lake Success ended up in a dry lakebed in the Central Valley, not in wildfire-ravaged Southern California. The California Department of Water Resources further clarified that the military did not enter California; the federal water pumps were simply restarted after maintenance, and state water supplies remained plentiful.
Newsom’s use of Grok to question Trump’s mental acuity wasn’t just a one-off jab. It was part of a larger digital strategy orchestrated by his 29-year-old digital strategy director, Camille Zapata. According to The Boston Globe, Newsom’s posts on X—ranging from “DONALD IS FINISHED — HE IS NO LONGER ‘HOT’” to jokes about Trump’s supposed inability to manage the “big stairs” on Air Force One—have become a staple of his online persona. These posts are designed to both entertain and provoke, holding a mirror to Trump’s own online antics and, perhaps, offering Democrats a new playbook for countering MAGA world’s social media dominance.
But Newsom’s trolling isn’t limited to clever tweets. On August 23, 2025, he launched a line of “Real Patriot” merchandise, a direct parody of Trump’s MAGA products. The merchandise, announced in a booming all-caps post—"THE PATRIOT SHOP IS NOW OPEN!”—features hats emblazoned with “Real Patriot” and “Newsom was right about everything!” as well as tank tops, T-shirts, and even a now sold-out $100 “Holy Bible” signed by Newsom himself. The cheeky campaign quickly racked up over $100,000 in sales, according to The Daily Beast, and served as both a fundraising effort and a pointed commentary on Trump’s own foray into branded bibles and memorabilia.
Newsom explained his approach to reporters: “I hope it’s a wake-up call to the President of the United States following his example. If you have issues with what I’m putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns about what he’s putting out as President. To the extent it’s gotten attention, I’m pleased.” He also questioned how Trump’s barrage of tweets and Truth Social posts have become normalized over the years, asking why they haven’t received similar scrutiny.
Their animosity is not new. Disagreements between Newsom and Trump date back to the president’s first term, with public clashes over issues ranging from immigration and LGBTQ+ rights to the handling of California’s wildfires. In January 2025, after devastating fires in Los Angeles, Trump blamed Newsom for the severity of the blazes, while Newsom’s spokesperson accused the president of “playing politics” with the disaster. The feud escalated in June when Trump deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles to quell protests related to immigration raids, despite objections from California officials. Newsom called the move “purposefully inflammatory” and accused Trump of perpetuating “a unified assault on American traditions.”
More recently, the fight has shifted to redistricting. In early August, Newsom threatened to redraw California’s district lines in response to Texas Republicans’ efforts to reshape their own state’s political map, dubbing it “Liberation Day” for California. Trump, for his part, announced plans to file a lawsuit against Newsom’s proposal. “I think I’m going to be filing a lawsuit pretty soon, and I think we’re going to be very successful in it,” Trump told reporters. Newsom’s response? “Bring it.”
Trump hasn’t shied away from personal attacks, calling Newsom “a nice guy” but “incompetent” during an August 26 press conference. Newsom, never one to let an insult go unanswered, fired back with Trump-like phrases on X: “Such low energy. SAD!” and “THANK YOU FOR THE KIND WORDS, LITTLE HANDS. EVERYONE SEEMS TO BE TALKING ABOUT ME (AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR!)”
For Newsom, the digital sparring serves a dual purpose. It not only keeps him in the national spotlight—critical for someone with rumored presidential ambitions for 2028—but also energizes younger, social media-savvy voters who are accustomed to political battles being waged online as much as on the campaign trail. As The Boston Globe noted, Newsom’s approach is a marked contrast to more traditional Democratic strategies, suggesting a willingness to fight fire with fire in the digital age.
Other Democratic governors, like JB Pritzker of Illinois and Wes Moore of Maryland, have also stepped up their criticism of Trump, particularly in response to the president’s deployment of the National Guard to their states. But Newsom’s blend of humor, digital savvy, and willingness to engage directly with Trump’s style has set him apart, for better or worse.
As this summer of political spectacle draws to a close, the Newsom-Trump feud shows no signs of cooling off. Whether Newsom’s trolling will translate into broader political gains remains to be seen, but for now, he has succeeded in getting under Trump’s skin—and in making himself impossible to ignore.
