Gavin Newsom is auditioning for the role of Donald Trump’s loudest critic as part of his plan to become the next President.
He already played one desperate card back in July. Folks across the country rolled their eyes.
Then Trump said something on a Nebraska stage. And the California Governor’s response tells you plenty.
What Trump actually told the crowd in Grand Island
President Donald Trump rolled into Grand Island, Nebraska for a campaign rally at the Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds.
He spent part of his speech on the conflict with Iran and what it has cost the country. According to Fox News, Trump told the crowd Americans were paying a “small price . . . for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe.”
Then he got to the part that sent the press corps into orbit.
“They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego,” Trump said, according to Fox News. “This is a very small price to pay.”
Clip that line, slap a cable news chyron under it, and strip out everything around it, and you can make it sound like just about anything. The White House says the media did exactly that.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said the “media freakout” over the remark was “not rooted in reality.” Cheung told reporters the President was making a simple point about what a nuclear-armed Iran would have meant for American cities if nobody had stopped it.
“America is safer because of the President. Iran has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money,” Cheung said.
Trump has made some version of that argument for years. Keep the bomb out of Tehran’s hands, and Los Angeles and San Diego never land on anybody’s target list.
Newsom reached for the same worn-out lever
But Newsom wasn’t interested in the explanation.
The Democrat Governor fired off a statement to multiple outlets. “Donald Trump is mentally ill. TIME FOR THE 25TH!” Newsom said, according to Fox News.
He followed up with a post on X labeling the President “deranged and dangerous,” Fox News reported.
If any of this sounds familiar, there’s a good reason.
Back in July, Trump delivered a primetime address from the East Room of the White House on election security. Newsom answered with a video calling it “a legitimate 25th Amendment moment” and “the rambling of a mad king,” according to Fox News. He also cracked that the only thing missing from the speech “was tin foil,” The Daily Beast reported.
And in that same video, Newsom claimed Trump “wants to rig the election in 2026.”
US Representative Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) piled on at the time, writing on X: “How can anyone deny the urgency of the 25th Amendment at this point.”
Go back further and the pattern gets even plainer. In January 2021, a reporter asked Newsom whether he backed removing Trump through impeachment or the 25th Amendment. “I’m all for it,” Newsom said, according to the Associated Press, before he hustled the conversation in another direction.
So that’s three trips to the same well in a little over five years. Newsom keeps yanking the 25th Amendment lever like a slot machine. Nothing ever comes out.
The Biden problem Democrats keep hoping everybody forgot
The states ratified the 25th Amendment in 1967. It gives the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet, or another body Congress designates, the power to declare a President unable to do the job.
Gavin Newsom doesn’t sit in the Cabinet Room. He sits in Sacramento. His all-caps demand carries roughly the legal weight of a bumper sticker.
But procedure is the smaller of his two problems.
Republicans hammered Newsom in July over a glaring double standard, Fox News reported. Democrats spent years waving off every question about Joe Biden’s mental sharpness. Now they want to diagnose Trump off a rally clip.
Special counsel Robert Hur’s final report in February 2024 described Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” according to CNN. Hur’s report also raised that Biden couldn’t remember when his eldest son, Beau, died.
Biden and his allies fought that characterization tooth and nail, calling it inaccurate and unfair. Party leaders circled the wagons. The talking points held right up until they couldn’t.
Where was the 25th Amendment chatter back then? Where were the frantic all-caps statements from Sacramento?
Nowhere to be found, apparently. Funny how that works.
And the folks who spent those years assuring the country that Biden was sharp as a tack now expect the same country to trust their medical opinion on Trump. That’s a tough sell to anybody who was paying attention.
Where this circus heads next
Newsom isn’t the only one pushing the idea. Sunny Hostin of ABC’s The View recently floated the notion that Trump’s own Cabinet could invoke the 25th Amendment if Republicans lose control of Congress, according to a Fox News segment.
House Democrats have also unveiled a bill to examine removing Trump using the 25th Amendment, Fox News reported.
Put those pieces side by side and a picture starts to form. Democrats already impeached Trump twice in partisan exercises that went nowhere. Now some of them are road-testing a different removal tool while insisting they’re just raising “concerns.”
But Americans have seen this movie before. Democrats swore up and down before the 2018 midterms that impeachment wasn’t on the agenda. Then they grabbed the House gavel, and the hearings started.
It’s hard to watch Newsom’s routine and not suspect he’s performing for a national Democrat audience more than for the people of California. Every viral clip, every all-caps post, every 25th Amendment demand keeps his name in the headlines. Whether any of it holds up under scrutiny seems almost beside the point for him.
And somewhere in all the noise, the actual subject of Trump’s remarks got lost. The President was talking about why Iran couldn’t be allowed to get a nuclear weapon, and why keeping that bomb out of the regime’s hands keeps American cities safe without dragging the country into another forever war.
Newsom heard the clip. He skipped the context. Then he reached for the same lever one more time.
“Newsom again calls for Trump’s removal under 25th Amendment, White House hits back,” Fox News
“Newsom Demands 25th Amendment After Trump’s ‘Mad’ Speech,” The Daily Beast
“Conservatives flip script on Newsom after he demanded 25th Amendment for Trump: ‘Propped up a vegetable’,” Fox News
“Governor Newsom, state Assembly support removing Trump,” Associated Press (as cited by KRCR)
“Audio released of Biden interview with special counsel who described him as an ‘elderly man with a poor memory’,” CNN (as cited by KVIA)