In a recent interview, California Gov. Gavin Newsom took a swing at President Donald Trump, claiming that he’s slipping—not just in the polls, but also mentally.
“He’s lost it,” Newsom told Fox 11 Los Angeles. “He is not the same person that I dealt with just four years ago, and he’s incapable of even a train of thought.”
A potential 2028 presidential contender, Newsom didn’t hold back, calling out Trump—who plans to celebrate his 79th birthday on Saturday with a flashy military parade—for showing signs that he’s not up for the job.
The jabs mark a sharp escalation in their ongoing feud, which has intensified over the past week amid Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles in response to protests against ICE. Newsom has openly mocked Trump’s verbal flubs and apparent confusion over basic facts, casting him as unfit and out of touch.
“Trump doesn’t even know what day it is,” Newsom wrote on X after Trump claimed that they spoke on Monday when their call had actually happened two days earlier.
At another point, Newsom pointed out Trump’s stumbling up the steps of Air Force One over the weekend.
“He’s lost it. He hasn’t lost a step. And I saw him trip on the steps today,” he said.
In interview after interview, Newsom has been working overtime to paint Trump as mentally unwell. On The New York Times’ podcast “The Daily,” Newsom said that Trump started making up things he supposedly told him on that call—and then seemed to believe them.
“[He] starts making up all these things he claimed he told me about, which honestly starts to disturb me on a different level,” Newsom said. “Maybe he actually believed he said those things, and he’s not all there. I mean that.”
Some have questioned whether Newsom is being petty or just playing to the moment. His comments land as Republicans hammer former President Joe Biden for allegedly lacking the capacity to govern late in his presidency, claiming that some of his final decisions were unconstitutional. Outlets like Axios have suggested that it’s hypocritical for Newsom to raise alarms about Trump’s mental state without applying the same scrutiny to Biden.
Still, Trump’s recent gaffes haven’t gone unnoticed.
He’s confused Nissan with Nippon Steel. He’s also repeatedly mixed up names, once referencing GOP rival Nikki Haley when talking about former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But Democrats have largely failed to make those missteps stick.
While Biden’s stumbles have dominated headlines, Trump has mostly evaded sustained criticism over his mental sharpness, despite speeches that sometimes veer into the surreal.
Newsom, however, may be testing a new playbook. His recent media blitz, filled with swipes at Trump and his thinly veiled 2028 positioning, offers Democrats a glimpse at how to go on offense as the party tries to chart a path forward.
Take Tuesday night. During a primetime speech, Newsom zeroed in on what he called Trump’s latest authoritarian overreach. And he warned that what happened in Los Angeles could be a preview of what’s to come for the entire country.
“This isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles,” Newsom said. “When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state in this nation. This is about all of us. This is about you.”
But with his latest attacks, Newsom is showing that he can go personal and strategic at the same time. By hammering Trump’s mental misfires and authoritarian overreach in the same breath, he’s testing a line of attack that Democrats have largely tiptoed around: Trump is not just dangerous, but he’s also slipping.
If this is a preview of Newsom’s future presidential ambitions, it’s also a blueprint for how Democrats might go toe-to-toe with Trump. We can’t just fact check the lies; we must call out the incoherence behind them.