Latest news with #MAGA-embraced
Los Angeles Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Forget the high road: Newsom takes the fight to Trump and allies on social media
SACRAMENTO — In a common insult the Trump administration uses against dissidents of federal policy, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called a California judge a 'communist' after she blocked roving immigration arrests based on race alone. The MAGA-embraced epithet from Gov. Gavin Newsom's official press office in response, however, was hardly typical for a Democratic politician. 'This fascist cuck in DC continues his assault on democracy and the Constitution, and his attempt to replace the sovereignty of the people with autocracy,' the California governor's office posted on social media. 'Sorry the Constitution hurt your feelings, Stephen. Cry harder.' Popular among the far right and the gutters of social media, the term is used to insult liberals as weak and is also short for 'cuckold,' which refers to the husband of an unfaithful wife. The low blow sanctioned by a potential 2028 presidential candidate set a new paradigm for the political left that has long embraced Michelle Obama's 'when they go low, we go high' motto to rise above the callousness of Trump and his acolytes. It's also an example of Newsom's more aggressive social media strategy. This week the governor posted memes of Trump with child molester and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Shortly after the Department of Homeland Security detained and handcuffed U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla at a news conference in June, state Assemblymember Joe Patterson (R-Rockland) alleged on X that he would be treated the same way if he interrupted an event held by the governor. 'I'd politely ask you to leave,' retorted Newsom's communications director, Izzy Gardon. 'Though you do not deserve politeness in this moment for this grotesque tweet, you bald little man.' (Patterson later added 'Bald little man' to his profile on the social media site.) The governor and his taxpayer-supported press office joked that HBO had cast Miller as Lord Voldemort — the pasty, hairless super villain in the 'Harry Potter' stories — and mocked the scandal-plagued Texas attorney general after he accused Newsom of fomenting lawlessness. The governor defended the more combative posture at a recent news conference. He noted that Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, had used the word last month when he called Newsom 'the biggest cuck in politics.' 'I don't think they understand any other kind of language, so I have no apologies for standing tall and firm and pushing back against their cruelty,' Newsom said. Newsom's advisors say the governor reached a turning point after the president sent California National Guard troops into Los Angeles to protect federal agents from clashes with protesters during immigration sweeps. Since Trump took office in January, the Democratic leader had been walking a fine line between calling out the president and playing nice in hopes of being able to work together after the California wildfires. The governor said publicly said that the decision to militarize Los Angeles showed him that you can't work with the president, only for him. With federal troops on the ground, his aides said, Newsom also wanted to stand up for California, concerned about what would happen if he didn't. The directive was to match the tactics emanating from the White House and meet Trump and his allies where they are. Forget the high road. Over the last month, they've taken on more fights with Newsom's critics, reacted more quickly to shoot down misinformation about the governor or California, challenged narratives they find to be untrue, or unfair, and taken many of their own shots. 'Sometimes the best way to challenge a bully is to punch them in the metaphorical face,' said Bob Salladay, Newsom's top communications advisor. 'These tactics may seem extreme to some and they are, but there's a significant difference here: We're targeting powerful forces that are ripping apart this country, using their own words and tactics. Trump and Stephen Miller are attacking the powerless like every fascist bully before them.' Newsom's aides say the strategy is working. The governor's personal social media accounts gained 2.3 million new followers, including over 1 million each on TikTok and Instagram, and more than 883 million views from June 6 to July 6, according to his tallies. Podcasters and social media influencers, such as Fred Wellman and Brian Tyler Cohen, boosted the interest with their own posts about the governor. On TikTok in particular, there's a growing ecosystem of people who make videos about his videos. Newsom's official state accounts also experienced an exponential rise in followers and engagement in June. The attention bodes well for a politician considering a bid for president. His aides argue that the strategy benefits California by shutting down misinformation and helping people understand what's really going on. 'The thing that he does so well these days is that he responds rapidly, and he responds rapidly in a way that's very snackable to the average consumer of news,' said Karen North, a professor of digital social media at the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism. North pointed to the adage that 'it takes a minute to say a sound bite, but an hour to explain why it is false.' Republicans have been considered masters of sound bites for decades, and Democrats are often criticized for trying to explain the details of policies when people just want to hear the bottom line. Newsom is breaking that mold, she said. 'He has emerged as the person willing and able to take on the president, but in some ways, they use the same playbook of quick, engaging responses that are easy for people to understand without any analysis,' North said. 'Newsom has the advantage of playing defense as an offense. So when the president says something that is problematic to California or problematic to everyday citizens, Gavin Newsom is laser-focused and ready to strike back without any hesitation, and in a way that's very simple and very engaging.' In some ways, the governor learned the hard way after Trump used his platforms to label Newsom as 'incompetent' and blame him for the Los Angeles wildfires in January. The president made a barrage of claims at news conferences and on the social media site Truth Social about dry reservoirs, the need to transfer more water from Northern to Southern California, a lack of forest management and empty fire hydrants that went viral, leaving Newsom on the back foot defending himself. When Trump sent the National Guard into Los Angeles, the governor almost immediately went on the attack to counter the president's claims that he deployed troops to control lawlessness that Newsom had allowed. The governor's office said his June 10 speech, which framed Trump as unnecessarily invading an American city for his own political gain, received 41 million views. Although Newsom's aggression has received praise from some Democrats, it's also a 'a massive pivot from being a Bannon bro,' said Eric Jaye, a former senior advisor to Newsom turned critic who opposed his 2018 gubernatorial bid. Jaye is referring to the 'This is Gavin Newsom' podcast, where the governor flummoxed Democrats who thought he appeared too chummy with Trump campaign architect Steve Bannon, conservative personality Charlie Kirk and others close to the president. Newsom billed the show as an opportunity to speak to people with other viewpoints and he delivered on that premise. The governor also received criticism from within his own party for not forcefully challenging the perspectives that directly contradicted Democratic values, such as opposition to abortion rights, and agreeing with Kirk that it's unfair for transgender athletes to compete in women's sports. Jaye credited Newsom with 'a very quick turnaround,' which 'saved himself.' But now, with his amped-up social media presence, Newsom runs the risk of offending voters who miss respectful political discourse. Trump's derogatory nicknames for his opponents, such as calling Newsom 'Newscum' or Elizabeth Warren 'Pocahontas,' have not appeared to cause the president much political harm. He embraced 'lock her up' chants about Hillary Clinton in 2016 and constantly mocked Joe Biden before the former president dropped out of the 2024 presidential contest. Trump still won both races. North said Trump also has the benefit of saying things that appear 'passionate and reckless,' but people don't believe he's going to follow through. As a potential presidential contender, the question is whether Newsom can use words such as 'cuck' and say he wants to change laws to redistrict California to benefit Democrats in the midterm elections without worrying people and seeming too Trump-like to be palatable to voters who detest the president's antics. 'It has to be disturbing to a lot of people if the new era of politics involves hostile personal attacks,' North said. Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.
San Francisco Chronicle
28-06-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Trump is trying to turn California into a police state. Here's what's coming next
The stage is set for one hot summer on America's streets. Last week's U.S. Court of Appeals hearing on whether President Trump exceeded his authority — first, by unilaterally calling up thousands of California's National Guard troops to restore order in roughly six city blocks of Los Angeles and then by deploying hundreds of active-duty Marines specializing in urban warfare — was jaw-dropping. A Trump administration attorney argued before the court that his boss has the unreviewable power to call up the guard, not only as he has already done in the Golden State, but simultaneously in all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia. And to deploy, alongside these guard members, unlimited numbers of active-duty armed forces, such as the Marines, whose primary mission Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly pledged will focus on 'lethality, warfighting and readiness.' The court signing off on this shocking authoritarian overreach was paired with Trump's recent comments suggesting that Los Angeles is just the beginning ('We are going to have troops everywhere'), and Hegseth's belligerent refusal in last week's Senate oversight hearing to answer the simple question of whether or not he had given the order authorizing 'live ammunition' (one might, reasonably, assume the answer is 'yes'). Outrage over the court's sanctioning of Trump's military deployments was quickly overwhelmed by his bombing of Iran. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement has continued its provocations in Los Angeles — including the apparent racial profiling and arrest of a U.S. citizen on her way to work — with military backing. National Guard troops were also deployed last week more than 130 miles away from Los Angeles to assist in the raid of a suspected marijuana farm in Riverside County. The 'legal rationale' the administration has thus far successfully floated to justify these actions was an obscure 1798 law whose Fox News-friendly statutory nomenclature has quickly evolved into a MAGA-embraced, immigrant-bashing, chest-pounding rallying cry: The wording fits perfectly with the outright lies told during Trump's presidential campaign, about how Haitian immigrants were allegedly eating everyone's cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, and how a Venezuelan street gang had somehow turned Aurora, Colo., (conveniently located near an ICE detention center) into a 'war zone.' The Trump administration will almost certainly ride the Alien Enemies Act train until it jumps the court-sanctioned tracks, then simply catch the next train and then the next until they/we/all of us arrive at their chosen destination: A police state. The term 'police state,' as we all know, gets tossed around a lot. But few have a clear idea of what it is. A country becomes a police state when the line between civil and military authority is rendered meaningless. We're not there yet. But here's one scenario of how we might arrive at that fate, using Los Angeles (as Trump is doing in real life) as a case study. The last time a U.S. president sent the National Guard somewhere to address civil unrest was, of course, Los Angeles in 1992 during the riots after police officers were acquitted of the Rodney King beating. The initial request for a federal response originated with the governor, rather than the president. Then, as it is now, local police, such as the Los Angeles Police Department, train and practice alongside National Guard soldiers under a federal mandate known as Defense Support of Civil Authority. These joint preparations occur during weekend training drills of National Guard and reserve units and help to identify possible weaknesses in the chain of command and in general operations. One illustrative example of how crucial a role this authority plays in emergency operations — and how quickly things can turn bad, quickly — comes from the Rodney King riots and their aftermath. As the disturbances were winding down, an L.A. police sergeant who had taken fire some days earlier returned to the scene where shots were fired. With him was a Marine Corps infantry platoon led by a young lieutenant. With the Marines stationed in front of the house, the police sergeant sent two of his men around back. Before starting across the street to investigate, the police sergeant told the Marine lieutenant to 'cover him.' The entire platoon opened up with automatic weapons fire. 'Cover me' means something very different to a Marine than it means to a police officer. To a Marine, trained only for combat, 'cover me' means opening fire when a member of your team begins to advance on a target. Most people have probably seen this in a movie, if not in a modern war video game. That, however, is not what it means to police; it's a request to raise weapons to be ready to fire should the need arise. Fortunately, no one died that day. But we may not be so lucky on today's streets, given the lack of coordination and cooperation endemic to Trump's style of leadership. Should such a tragic incident come to pass, we can expect more civil unrest — possibly even riots — and for Trump to weaponize that straight out of the fascist playbook, something he's already doing with his ICE provocations: Stir something up, wait for your loyal base to call on its dear leader to restore order. Send in more troops, provide that 'iron fist' for which your followers yearn, tighten your grip on power. Wrap yourself in the flag, flood the zone with propaganda, rinse/repeat. The aggressive actions in Los Angeles have not, as of yet, resulted in significant injury and harm to civilians or police. But other cities, other states might not be so lucky. As Trump almost certainly seeks to expand his operations in the coming weeks and months to New York or perhaps Chicago, Democratic governors likely to find themselves in the crosshairs would be well-advised to begin preparing now, while their National Guard is still under their command and control. Make no mistake, America: Our mettle and our intestinal fortitude are about to be tested. We hold out hope that the Supreme Court will issue an emergency ruling telling the president he has exceeded his powers. Especially if people start to die. This would put some daylight between what Trump is trying to pull and his actual official powers. If he then persists in issuing orders to the military, which the court has declared illegal, you can rest assured the military has ways, largely unfamiliar to civilians, to maintain 'good order and discipline' in its ranks. Arresting a superior officer (including a commander-in-chief) may be contemplated where his or her actions warrant such. Especially when that becomes necessary to fulfill their sacred oath to 'protect and defend the Constitution.' Semper fi. Brett Wagner, now retired, served as a professor of national security decision making for the U.S. Naval War College and adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. J. Holmes Armstead, now retired, served as a professor of strategy and international law at the U.S. Naval War College and as a judge advocate general, inspector general and civil affairs officer in the U.S. Army, Army Reserves and National Guard.
