Finally, signs of life in the Democrats
Gavin Newsom breaks free from Michelle Obama's sanctimonious decree
One of the biggest surprises of the second Trump Administration is not MAGA’s assault on the institutions and the abuse of the military to assert domestic control, but the lack of resistance to America’s slide towards illiberalism, if not authoritarianism.
US President Donald Trump is doing much of what he said.
‘Promises made, promises kept,’ is one of his Administration’s catchphrases.
He was open about politicising the Department of Justice after being on the receiving end of legal pursuits during the Biden Administration.
And it’s looking like payback time. Vice President JD Vance barely concealed that the pursuit of John Bolton, one of Mr Trump’s fiercest critics after serving as his national security adviser during the first term, was political.
‘There’s a broad concern about Ambassador Bolton,’ Mr Vance told Meet the Press.
‘They’re going to look into it and like I said, if there’s no crime here, we’re not going to prosecute it.’
Note the use of ‘we’re.’
Mr Trump has begun fusing his crackdown on illegal immigration and crime with the use of the National Guard and military to enforce it.
He deployed troops to Los Angeles to support the forcible deportations of immigrants being carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, who are often wearing masks and have been filmed snatching people, and in some cases — US citizens and not illegal migrants — from the streets.
They are chilling and horrifying scenes that should appear in documentaries about living in dictatorships, not the country of liberty.
And he has deployed the National Guard to Washington DC, usually called up to respond to natural disasters, to clean up the capital and rid it of crime.
His next target is the city of Chicago, the most populous city in the Democrat-governed state of Illinois and run by the black Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson.
‘Unlawfully deploying the National Guard to Chicago has the potential to inflame tensions between residents and law enforcement when we know that trust between police and residents is foundational to building safer communities,’ the Mayor said.
Unless, of course, this is the plan. Civil unrest would give Mr Trump another pretext to deepen and extend the use of law enforcement and the military against the American people.
And yet the Democrats have failed to land a punch on these alarming tendencies, except one.
Outraged by the deployment of troops to LA, the Democratic Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has finally found a way to attack Mr Trump — by mimicking him.
It began with equally childish tweets issued by his official press account, written in the same style as Mr Trump’s social media posts and calling the US President ‘Little Hands,’ an insult that has long annoyed Mr Trump.
‘WOW !! PRESIDENT TRUMP SAYS ABOUT ME, GAVIN C. NEWSOM: “HE’S A NICE GUY, LOOKS GOOD.” THANK YOU FOR THE KIND WORDS, LITTLE HANDS. EVERYONE SEEMS TO BE TALKING ABOUT ME (AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR!). —GCN’ he wrote on X, in one example.
In another post, he used Elon Musk’s AI bot on X, Grok, to troll Mr Trump’s mental state.
‘Do people with dementia repeat false things over and over again?’ his post asked Grok.
‘Yes, people with dementia can repeat false statements or beliefs, a behaviour often linked to memory impairments and cognitive changes,’ Musk’s chatbot responded.
Mercifully, someone has finally departed from Michelle Obama’s sanctimonious decree: ‘When they go low, we go high.’
Like many of Mr Trump’s brutal and jaw-dropping but often also downright funny attacks, Mr Newsom’s similarly land, because they hit at a kernel of truth and are wrapped in humour.
Not that he is laughing so much. When Mr Newsom sat down with Politico in Sacramento this week, he was serious and fired up and showed a Trump-like talent to talk at length, without a single note but with emotion and charisma.
Mr Newsom has understood that whatever the reign of Trump 2.0 brings, this is not the climate for business as usual; it is time to take risks.
‘I’m on the other side of any kind of hesitancy that I had prior,’ Mr Newsom said.
‘I’m on the other side of giving a damn about people’s feelings about this moment because I see the threats in very vivid terms.’
Mr Newsom said seeing firsthand the effects of the ICE raids on his community had changed him and his approach to politics.
‘In every way, shape or way I have changed … and when I’m done, I have to meet this moment, so yeah, this has been very clarifying, this has been very sobering,’ he said.
He is unequivocal about what America faces — in his view, a US President displaying authoritarian tendencies, preparing to rig elections through the use of a ‘private police force’.
Mr Trump has repeatedly flirted with the idea of seeking a third term, something he is constitutionally barred from seeking.
When he hosted Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky and European leaders at the White House last week, presidential assistant Margo Martin posted a photo on social media of the President showing Mr Zelensky and France’s Emmanuel Macron his ‘4 More years hat.’
Ms Martin included a crying with laughter emoji and the American flag alongside her caption.
Earlier, Mr Trump had joked with Mr Zelensky about using martial law, as is imposed in Ukraine, to avoid holding elections.
‘So let me just say, three and a half years from now, so you mean if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections?’ Mr Trump joked.
‘I wonder what the fake news would say about that.’
Mr Zelensky, who was doing his best to avoid another Oval Office humiliation, laughed in response and noted: ‘You like this idea?’
During that encounter, Mr Trump also floated his opposition to mail-in voting after being advised on the matter by Russian President Vladimir Putin during their meeting in Alaska, Anchorage.
Mr Newsom sees no jokes.
‘He tried to steal the last election, he’s trying to rig it in plain sight this time,’ Newsom said.
‘You think he’s joking about 2028? You think when he brings foreign leaders to the Oval Office and he goes to the White House store and he shows them the 2028 hats, he’s not being serious?
‘Who spends $200 million on a ballroom at their house and then leaves?
‘Pay attention, folks, this guy is not screwing around. Wake up, we’re losing this country in real-time.
‘This is not bloviation, this is not an exaggeration, it’s happening.
‘The rule of law is being replaced by the rule of Don, period, full stop.’
Mr Newsom said Democrats had to assert themselves with clarity and conviction.
‘I’m sick and tired of Democrats being on the losing end in this country and our democracy being on the losing end,’ he said.
‘We have got to fight fire with fire.’
There are other promising signs that the left is beginning to grasp the magnitude of its failures.
This week, the centre-left think tank Third Way issued a plea to fellow travellers, urging all Democrats and their supporters to ditch immediately 45 words that make them sound ‘extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory, enforcers of wokeness.’
Included in the list are: Privilege, patriarchy, LGBTQIA+, intersectionality, cisgender, chest feeding, pregnant people, stakeholders, barriers to participation, food insecurity, critical theory, systems of oppression and many other words this author was not even aware existed, let alone would be used by anyone normal in regular conversation.
And that’s the point. Mr Newsom is actively meeting Mr Trump where he’s at — using simple language, plain-speaking and getting personal in the attacks.
And it’s retail.
‘This is the guy that’s going to ruin Christmas with the tax on all the toys that’s coming in the next few months with all these illegal tariffs,’ Mr Newsom warned.
And the response from Mr Trump and his acolytes suggests Mr Newsom’s attacks are having an impact.
Mr Trump has reverted to calling the Governor ‘Newscum’ and claimed he is ‘way down in the polls.’
Mr Newsom is also a regular topic on Fox News, the right-wing news channel that the Democrat regularly fact-checks.
Sean Hannity, a commentator supportive of Mr Trump, blasted Mr Newsom and said he was embarrassing himself with his posts and copycat stunts. That Mr Newsom is imitating Mr Trump was evidently lost on the Fox News host.
For beleaguered, shell-shocked Democrats who have struggled to find their feet ever since an ailing Joe Biden froze on national television, the irony will be as delicious as it is bittersweet.
Mr Newsom’s performance makes it all the more painfully obvious that he would have been a better choice than Kamala Harris, although no one may have ultimately stopped Mr Trump’s return to the White House.
Mr Newsom is an obvious contender for the Democratic primary and may well get his go. A central challenge will be reframing patriotism, as Mr Trump continues to morph the demand of loyalty to the country to himself.
Mr Newsom is prepared for the fight, however ugly it may get.
‘I’m not calm and I’m not going to submit myself to niceties, not when this guy is trying to wreck our goddamn country,’ he said.
‘This is a real and serious moment in US history, and by the way I say that as an American, not as a Democrat.
‘Every Republican should be ashamed about this and scared to death about not just about these authoritarian tendencies but these authoritarian actions by the President.
‘He is weak, he is weakness masquerading as strength and that makes him more dangerous than most people believe.’
Mr Newsom would be the first to hope that his predictions do not come true. But whether he and his fellow Democrats can meet that moment if they do could redefine America.
This piece was first published by The Nightly