White House officials, including Communications Director Steven Cheung, sharply criticized California Governor Gavin Newsom’s address to the nation, mocking both the production quality and the content. Cheung suggested that Newsom had prioritized creating a video over fulfilling his gubernatorial duties, calling the production ‘sh***y’ in a post on X. This critique came in the context of ongoing immigration protests in Los Angeles, where Newsom accused President Donald Trump’s administration of ‘brazenly abusing power’ by deploying thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines to quell unrest.
Newsom’s address highlighted the situation in Los Angeles, where over 200 people had been arrested in connection to the protests. He framed the deployment of military forces as a threat to democracy and called for unity. In response, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller took to X to mock Newsom’s call for peaceful protests, sharing a photo of a shirtless man waving a California flag while standing on a vehicle and juxtaposing it with Newsom’s statement about the Founding Fathers.
White House Deputy Assistant for Communications Alex Pfieffer also defended the Trump administration’s actions, stating that voters had elected Trump to enforce immigration laws. Pfieffer labeled California’s resistance to federal control as an attempt to ‘subvert democracy.’ Meanwhile, White House officials continued to challenge Newsom’s leadership, implying that his comments on the threat to democracy were influenced by former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign team.