Gavin Newsom leads new Democratic strategy to cast doubt on Trump’s mental fitness: ‘He’s not all there

Cal­i­for­nia Gov­er­nor Gavin New­som cast doubt on Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s men­tal acu­ity dur­ing his appear­ance on ‘The Times’ pod­cast

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Cal­i­for­nia Gov­er­nor Gavin New­som has launched a sharp new offen­sive against Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, sug­gest­ing the com­man­der-in-chief may be men­tal­ly unfit for office.

The accu­sa­tion comes on the heels of Newsom’s high-pro­file $787 mil­lion defama­tion law­suit against Fox News. The gov­er­nor claims the net­work delib­er­ate­ly aired a mis­lead­ing video to paint him as a liar over a phone call with Trump dur­ing the Los Ange­les riots.

New­som appeared to point to Trump’s claims about the phone call as evi­dence that the com­man­der-in-chief is expe­ri­enc­ing the kind of cog­ni­tive decline Repub­li­cans once used against for­mer pres­i­dent Joe Biden

Gavin New­som talks about Don­ald Trump’s mis­rep­re­sent­ing their con­ver­sa­tions

Crit­ics have increas­ing­ly point­ed to Don­ald Trump’s grow­ing num­ber of pub­lic mis­steps, label­ing them as “senior moments,” 

He has stum­bled while climb­ing the stairs of Air Force One, con­fused the UK with the EU dur­ing a G7 sum­mit with British Prime Min­is­ter Keir Starmer, and mis­re­mem­bered con­ver­sa­tions, includ­ing one with New­som.

Trump turned 79 ear­li­er this month, set­ting him on course to become the old­est US pres­i­dent in his­to­ry by the time he leaves office, sur­pass­ing Biden. Spot­ting an oppor­tu­ni­ty, New­som launched an effort to flip the age and cog­ni­tion nar­ra­tive Repub­li­cans pre­vi­ous­ly used against Biden, now aim­ing it at Trump.


Cal­i­for­nia Gov­er­nor Gavin New­som speaks dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at Raleigh Stu­dios unveil­ing a vast expan­sion of California’s Film and Tele­vi­sion Cred­it Pro­gram on Octo­ber 27, 2024, in Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The con­tro­ver­sy erupt­ed dur­ing a dis­pute over Trump’s deploy­ment of Nation­al Guard troops to quell the inten­si­fy­ing anti-ICE protests in down­town Los Ange­les.

New­som accused Trump of dis­tort­ing their June 6 phone call, alleg­ing that the pres­di­ent either fab­ri­cat­ed the details or tru­ly believes events that nev­er occurred, a charge that rais­es seri­ous ques­tions about Trump’s men­tal clar­i­ty.

Which, I mean, hon­est­ly, starts to dis­turb me on a dif­fer­ent lev­el, that maybe he actu­al­ly believed he said those things,” New­som said dur­ing a June 12 inter­view on The New York Times’ ‘The Dai­ly’ pod­cast. “And he’s not all there.”

When asked to clar­i­fy his com­ments, pod­cast host Michael Bar­baro repeat­ed Newsom’s remark: “He’s not all there?”

“I don’t know,” New­som replied, then elab­o­rat­ed. He claimed that Trump insist­ed they had anoth­er con­ver­sa­tion fol­low­ing his deci­sion to deploy US Marines to Los Ange­les, a con­ver­sa­tion New­som says nev­er took place.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump speaks dur­ing a news con­fer­ence fol­low­ing the 2025 NATO Sum­mit on June 25, 2025, in The Hague, Nether­lands (Omar Havana/Getty Images)

The con­flict esca­lat­ed when New­som filed a $787 mil­lion defama­tion law­suit against Fox News, claim­ing the net­work delib­er­ate­ly edit­ed video footage to sup­port Trump’s ver­sion of events. The Demo­c­rat main­tains that he’s telling the truth and argues that the manip­u­lat­ed cov­er­age spread false claims about the call.

Gavin New­som claims he had a ‘mys­te­ri­ous con­ver­sa­tion’ with Don­ald Trump

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence on June 12, Gavin New­som reit­er­at­ed that his last actu­al con­ver­sa­tion with Don­ald Trump had tak­en place on June 6.

Inter­net slams Gavin New­som as he says Don­ald Trump is ‘not all there’

After Gavin New­som’s appar­ent new offen­sive strat­e­gy tar­get­ing Don­ald Trump’s pub­lic mis­steps sur­faced online, it sparked back­lash against the Cal­i­for­nia gov­er­nor.

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One user crit­i­cized the Demo­c­rat, writ­ing, “It is such a strange thing how New­som com­plains about the prob­lems in his own state as if some­one oth­er than him­self was respon­si­ble. He is so polit­i­cal that he can’t even attempt to fix prob­lems in his own state. He is absolute­ly use­less.”

Anoth­er said, “Des­per­a­tion at the high­est lev­el can’t wait for gavin’s exit from CA.”

“Trump took tests and Biden refused! Every­one trips now and then!” an indi­vid­ual claimed, where­as one more said, “This guy take oleagi­nous to a new lev­el. Very creepy.”