California Gov. Newsom trolls Trump in redistricting fight

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Gov. Gavin Newsom is borrowing a page from President Trump to mock the self-proclaimed “Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters” in the ongoing battle over redistricting in Texas.

Hammering home his warning that California will retaliate against Texas by changing its congressional maps, Mr. Newsom is trolling Mr. Trump on social media with familiar all-caps posts littered with first-person references, declarative statements, insulting nicknames, run-on sentences and heavy reliance on the word “beautiful” and exclamation points.

“MAKE THE MAPS GREAT AGAIN!” Mr. Newsom’s office said Thursday on X. “BIG BEAUTIFUL RALLY TODAY. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!”

Mr. Newsom this week proclaimed the new maps: “WILL END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY.” In another post, he said “Covfefe” — alluding to a Trump tweet that went viral during his first term, and was thought to be a typing mishap.

Arguably more than any other Democrat, Mr. Newsom has seized on chances to stand up against and trade blows with Mr. Trump on the national stage as he flirts with a 2028 presidential bid.

Mr. Trump hasn’t been impressed. This week, he called Mr. Newsom “incompetent.” 

“He’s got a good line of bulls—- but that’s about it,” the president told reporters at the White House.

The Newsom administration has sued the Trump administration more than 30 times.

The 57-year-old Democrat has challenged the administration’s termination of federal grants, deployment of the national guard to Los Angeles to support immigration enforcement operations, and now the redistricting effort in Texas, which has drawn national attention because of the impact it could have on the 2026 election and the GOP’s chances of defending its slim House majority.

And in this latest battle, Mr. Newsom said California will rewrite their maps to nuetralize the GOP’s gains in Texas, and toyed with a new social media persona that is testing T.S. Elliot’s assertion that: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”

For his part, Mr. Trump, 79, has been the undisputed heavyweight champ of political social media. 

He single-handedly redefined the way elected officials, political aspirants, and grassroots activists use it to nuke their rivals, promote their ideas, and rally their supporters.

“I understand social media. Maybe better than anybody, ever,” Mr. Trump said during a campaign stop in South Carolina in 2015. “Somebody said I’m the Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters.”

Since then, Twitter increased its character limit, tech billionaire Elon Musk bought the platform and renamed it X.

Mr. Trump also launched his platform, Truth Social, which has been another vehicle for him to eviscerate the “FAKE NEWS” and his political foes, highlight his accomplishments, and share the praise he receives primarily from right-wing commentators.

“Wow! Highest polling Republican President in HISTORY! Thank you,” Mr. Trump wrote this week.

Mr. Trump has also used it as a weapon against Mr. Newsom, who has become one of his favorite targets.

“If I didn’t put the National Guard into Los Angeles, the place would be burned down to the ground right now. I did incompetent Governor Gavin Newscum, who doesn’t have a clue, the favor of a lifetime,” Mr. Trump said in a recent post. “One of the WORST GOVERNORS IN HISTORY!”

Mr. Newsom is now trying to fight fire with fire in the war over redistricting, telling Mr. Trump that he should take his redistricting threat seriously.

“I, YOUR FAVORITE GOVERNOR, GAVIN CHRISTOPHER NEWSOM, OFFERED THE BEST, MOST ‘AMAZING DEAL’ IN HISTORY: STOP RIGGING TEXAS MAPS AND CALIFORNIA WON’T MAKE OURS MORE ‘BEAUTIFUL,’” Mr. Newsom said on X. “SADLY — BUT NO SURPRISE — DONALD WAS TOO WEAK (LITTLE HANDS) TO EVEN WRITE ME BACK. NO DEAL!”

In another post, Mr. Newsom said the Trump White House is about to learn a hard lesson after refusing to call off his troops in Texas.

“WOW! TOMORROW HISTORY WILL BE MADE,” the post read, adding that White House spokesperson “KaroLYIN LEAVITT WILL HAVE NO ANSWERS FOR THE SUPPOSED ‘FAKE MEDIA’ ABOUT CALIFORNIA’S BEAUTIFUL MAPS. 

“PEOPLE ARE SAYING THEY ARE THE GREATEST MAPS EVER CREATED — EVEN BETTER THAN CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS’. DONALD “THE FAILURE” TRUMP BE WARNED, TOMORROW MAY BE THE WORST DAY OF YOUR LIFE, he said. “ALL BECAUSE YOU ‘MISSED THE DEADLINE’”

 “LIBERATION DAY FOR AMERICA!!!” Mr. Newsom wrote on Wednesday night. In Trump-like fashion, he signed off with his initials: “GCN.”

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