Trump Asked Why He Thinks He Can Arrest Gavin Newsom — Says He Committed ‘Crime’ of ‘Running For Governor’
President Donald Trump on Monday defended his threat to arrest Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom, suggesting that his leadership failures amounted to a criminal offense.
Asked directly by a reporter what crime Newsom had committed, Trump responded, “I think his primary crime is running for governor because he’s done such a bad job.”
Trump was fielding questions from the media in the State Dining Room at the White House when a reporter asked about threats to arrest Newsom from him and his border czar Tom Homan.
“But you have a governor who let the city burn down, didn’t want water to be sent down to him,” Trump complained about Newsom and January’s wildfires. “I mean, I sent billions of gallons of water. I wanted to do it in the first term. He wouldn’t do it over. I don’t know, they have environmental reasons, but there were no environmental reasons. It’s, I think it’s just a political philosophy. But it’s lucky for the people in Los Angeles and in California that we did what we did.”
Media outlets fact-checked Trump’s claims about the wildfires and found multiple misrepresentations and inaccuracies.
A reporter asked the president, “What crime has Governor Newsom committed?”
Trump replied:
What crime has he committed? I think his primary crime is running for governor because he’s done such a bad job. What he’s to that state is like what Biden did to this country. And that’s pretty bad. It’s the wrong philosophy. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, many of them prisoners, they’re taking up your healthcare, they’re taking up your space in schools, they’re taking up your hospital. And in many cases, they’re criminals. And we have to do something about it. And we’re doing something about.
Newsom dared Homan to arrest him earlier in the day.
After coming across a clip of Trump accusing him of a crime from the White House, Newsom shared it on his X page and commented, “Donald Trump admits he will arrest a sitting governor simply because he ran for office.”
Watch above via C-SPAN.
