Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, has calledDonald Trumpa “stone cold liar”, condemned the federal deployment of troops in Los Angeles as “theater” and “madness” and even questioned the president’s mental fitness, as protests over immigration raids in the city continue.
Trump federalized 2,000 of California’s national guard on Saturday, with a US president acting over the objections of a state governor in this way for the first time in more than half a century. It followed the outbreak of protests over a series of sweeping immigration raids in the LA area, with Newsom criticizing Trump’s actions as illegal overreach, unconstitutional and “provocation”.
Now US Marines are being added to this force to back up arrests by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency, in tactics Newsom said have been used to “disappear” people unlawfully in these raids rather than confront the protestors who have destroyed property around an Ice facility in downtown Los Angeles.
Newsom, a Democrat, said that Trump never raised with him the federalizing of the national guard before it occurred, when the two spoke by phone last Friday, despite the president’s claims to the contrary. “He lied, stone cold liar,” the governor told the New York Times podcastthe Daily on Thursday morningin an interview.
Of the subsequent rare commanding of the national guard troops by the president, rather than the governor, Newsom told the Daily: “It came completely out of left field.”
The federalized national guard have been taken from their duties on the border and working in California’s forests to clear undergrowth to prevent wildfires and have had to be protected by police as protesters were specifically angry at them being deployed by the president, Newsom said.
“That is how ridiculous this whole thing is,” he said. “This is theater, it’s madness, it’s unconstitutional, it’s immoral. It puts people’s lives at risk, these people are being used as pawns.”
Newsom said that “looting is unacceptable” but that more than 1,600 police were dealing with the situation and his greater concern is the “thuggish behavior” of the Trump administration in ordering the military onto the streets of a US city. Several members of the federalized national guard have told friends and family they aredeeply unhappy about the deployment.
“This sends fear and chills up the spines of law-abiding citizens,” said Newsom, who has warned that other states and US democracy itself is under threat from the presidential overreach. “That is a red line crossed, it is a serious and profound moment in American history.”
Newsom told local media that Trump’s age seemed to be affecting him.
He claimed to the Times that the president can’t recall the phone conversation they had on Friday and that “he’s not all there”, echoing comments first made by the governor on Monday that Trump, who turns 79 on Saturday, is “incapable of even a train of thought” and that he has “lost it”.
Trump has said that he wants to “liberate” Los Angeles from protesters and has escalated a feud with Newsom, a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, by even suggesting the governor himself could be arrested. Los Angeles was calmer on Wednesday evening than at the weekend and the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, has emphasized in local appearances how small an area has been affected by any trouble, with a limited area under curfew and no looting experienced there overnight into Thursday.
However as protests continue, there were several hundred further arrests late on Wednesday.
Newsom also said in the interview broadcast and published on Thursday that his 15-year-old daughter came home from school crying at the prospect of him being arrested. “I said that doesn’t matter, what matters is the military on the streets,” he said. “I will handle that, I will be fine. I am worried about you, I’m worried about this country, I’m worried about everything we’ve taken for granted and fought so hard for disappearing overnight.”
The protests have spread to other cities including New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Seattle and Spokane in Washington state, Austin and San Antonio in Texas. Meanwhile immigration “enforcement activity” hasextendedto California’s agricultural heartland, where many farm workers are undocumented people.
On Wednesday, Trump was bothbooed and cheeredwhile attending a performance of Les Misérables in Washington at the Kennedy Center in the capital, which he took over after returning to the White House. And Trump said that the actions in Los Angeles were necessary. “If I didn’t act quickly on that, Los Angeles would be burning to the ground right now,” Trump said.