Trump “doesn’t play by a different set of rules,” Newsom said. “He doesn’t believe in the rules. And as a consequence, we need to disabuse ourselves of the way things have been done…. We have got to meet fire with fire…. So that’s what this is about. It’s not complicated. We’re doing this in reaction to a president of the United States that called a sitting governor of the state of Texas and said, find me five seats…. We can’t stand back and watch this democracy disappear, district by district all across this country…. We need to be firm in our resolve. We need to push back.” He called this moment “a break the glass moment for our democracy, for our nation.”
Newsom called for Americans to “[w]ake up to what Donald Trump is doing…. Wake up to the assault on institutions and knowledge and history. Wake up to his war on science, public health, his war against the American people. This is a guy who lays claim to want to get a Nobel Prize sitting there and bending his knee to Mr. Putin.”
“We do have agency,” Newsom reminded his audience. “We’re not bystanders in this world. We can shape the future.” Noting that “this time requires us to act anew, not just think anew,” Newsom nodded to President Abraham Lincoln’s famous call from 1862: “The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise—with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”
Newsom’s team has been garnering attention lately by trolling Trump on social media, taunting the president with grandiose, jerky, all-caps posts that mimic Trump’s own. Today, Newsom continued that taunting by pointing out that Trump wants to rig the district maps because he knows his party is going to lose the midterms. Newsom called Trump “a failed president” and pointed to Trump’s dispatch of the Border Patrol to intimidate the people in attendance at the event as proof Trump is “weak…broken, someone whose weakness is masquerading as his strength…. The most unpopular president in modern history.”
On a day in which a new report this morning from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed flashing red lights over inflation caused by Trump’s tariffs, Newsom trolled Trump by echoing the president’s triumphant promise that April 2, when he announced those tariffs, was “Liberation Day. Newsom called today’s announcement “Liberation Day in the State of California.”
When a reporter asked Newsom whether his mimicry of Trump’s social media posts is a strategy, he replied: “I hope it’s a wake up call…. If you’ve got issues with what I’m putting out. You sure as hell should have concerns about what he’s putting out as president…. But I think the deeper question is, how have we allowed the normalization of his tweets through social posts over the course of the last many years to go without similar scrutiny and notice.”
In a press release about the event, Newsom’s office emphasized that Democratic leaders from across the country have been launching similar broadsides against Trump’s push for redistricting, quoting Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego, Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, New York governor Kathy Hochul, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy, and Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker.
After the events, Newsom’s press office posted on social media: “DONALD IS FINISHED—HE IS NO LONGER “HOT.” FIRST THE HANDS (SO TINY) AND NOW ME—GAVIN C. NEWSOM—HAVE TAKEN AWAY HIS “STEP.” MANY ARE SAYING HE CAN’T EVEN DO THE “BIG STAIRS” ON AIR FORCE ONE ANYMORE—USES THE LITTLE BABY STAIRS NOW. SAD! TOMORROW HE’S GOT HIS “MEETING” WITH PUTIN IN “RUSSIA.” NOBODY CARES. ALL THE TELEVISION CAMERAS ARE ON ME, AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR. EVEN LOW-RATINGS LAURA INGRAM (EDITS THE TAPES!) CAN’T STOP TALKING ABOUT MY BEAUTIFUL MAPS. YOU’RE WELCOME FOR LIBERATION DAY, AMERICA! DONNIE J MISSED “THE DEADLINE” (WHOOPS!) AND NOW I RUN THE SHOW. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! —GCN”
The office followed that post up with one that recalled Trump’s February 2025 reference to himself as a king, a reference that likely referred to a decades-old puff piece that called Trump “the king of New York.” After a popular outcry at Trump’s apparent claim to a throne, the White House followed up with an AI-generated image of the cover of what appeared to be Time magazine showing Trump wearing a crown in front of the New York City skyline with the legend “Long live the king.”
Newsom’s version replaced Trump’s image with his own, symbolically taking over turf that at the height of his popularity Trump considered his own. It declared: “A SUCCESSFUL LIBERATION DAY! THANK YOU!”