Newsom Blasts Trump Over Iran Strikes: ‘weakness Masquerading As Strength’

SAN FRANCISCO — Gavin Newsom lit into Donald Trump over the strikes in Iran, casting the attack as a sign of ‘weakness’ and meant to distract from the president’s abysmal poll numbers.

“It stems from weakness masquerading as strength,” Newsom told a San Francisco audience during a Saturday night event to promote his new memoir. “It stems from the complete failure of this administration, this president who's historically unpopular.”

The California governor, a likely 2028 Democratic presidential contender, said Trump is trying to distract voters from his failures “across the spectrum” and accused Trump of “doubling down on stupid” during his State of the Union speech earlier this week.

In his remarks, Newsom joined his party's harshest critics of the strikes, even as some battleground Democrats on Saturday took a more cautious tone.

California is home to more than half of the nearly 400,000 Iranian immigrants in the United States. The West Los Angeles neighborhood known as Tehrangeles had erupted earlier Saturday in celebration amid reports Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed. Many Iranian Americans hope it will mean the fall of the Islamic Republic’s regime.

Trump had called Khamenei’s death “the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Newsom, in a social media post earlier Saturday, said while the “leadership of Iran must go,” that sentiment does not justify Trump sparking an “illegal, dangerous war” that could endanger the lives of American military members.

The governor, speaking to journalist Kara Swisher in San Francisco, said Trump has failed to explain to the American public what immediate crisis justified the attacks on Iran, referring to the situation as “manufactured crisis.”

“That’s Donald Trump, the chaos president,” he said, “this wrecking ball president, across the board. Destruction is not strength. And, once again … we’re seeing him destroy any capacity to explain fundamentally what the core American interest is at this moment to declare war.”