Urges Democrats to fight.......

'We did something about it': Gavin Newsom urges Democrats to take the fight to Trump

“We're more likely to write an op-ed in the New York Times than do a damn thing about it,” the governor said.

By Lindsey Holden

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday defended his push to redraw his state’s congressional map, saying the Democratic Party should take on President Donald Trump more aggressively.

“This guy’s trying to rig the midterm elections,” he said in New York City at a climate-themed conference put on by the New York Times. “And I promise you, they know us Democrats — we’re more likely to write an op-ed in the New York Times than do a damn thing about it. And the difference is, we did something about it with this initiative.”

His comments about the California redistricting initiative, Proposition 50, came in response to a question on his strategy of mimicking Trump’s bombastic, all-caps missives on social media.

“It’s a little bit of parody, and a little bit of levity,” he said. Democrats, he added, are “a party where sometimes we tend to take ourselves a little too seriously. And we frankly are a little dull, at times.”

Newsom also pushed back on Trump’s remarks Tuesday at the United Nations calling climate change a “con job.” He called administration officials a “wholly owned subsidiary of fossil fuel interests.”

“He’s an ideologue, Trump, and he’s not even a good one, because he has no sort of foundational philosophy, and his thinking has the form and substance of fog,” he said.

Newsom sought to portray California as a steadying force on climate policy. He signed a package of bills last week to extend the state’s trading program for greenhouse gases, rescue wildfire-threatened utilities and boost oil drilling in an attempt to preserve the state’s dwindling refining capacity.

“We’re what’s left of environmental policy, despite the headwinds in Washington, D.C.,” he said. “If there’s anything I want to communicate for those of you, particularly outside this country, we are your stable and reliable partner, and we will continue to be in this space.”

Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential contender, has used his Climate Week trip to promote his combative tactics against the Trump administration before global audiences, with the United Nations General Assembly convening in New York City this week. He made some of the same points during a Tuesday night appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” in which he condemned “authoritarian actions by an authoritarian government.”

The governor’s commentary has infuriated Republicans like Vice President JD Vance, who on Wednesday sought to lay blame on Newsom and other Democrats for a shooting at an ICE detention center in Dallas that left two detainees dead and another injured.

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Newsom stressed the governor’s consistent condemnation of violence against law enforcement while slamming Trump for pardoning “cop-beaters,” a reference to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.