(Dobbs) "THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER”

Gavin Newsom is breathing fire, and he’s not cooling off.

I used to believe in the Democratic leaders who talked sense to the American people. They were right for the times. Now I’m more enamored with those who talk fire.

Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, shot out the hottest flames this past week.

They burned with both strategy and satire. All designed to fight back against Donald J. Trump, and every subordinate enabling this president to execute his perfidious plans.

The satire’s the most fun, so we’ll start there.

On Tuesday Newsom’s office starting posting on X its defiance to Trump and his scheme to accelerate congressional redistricting in GOP-friendly states, starting with Texas. But the posts weren’t bureaucratic blather. They were written all in Trump’s own style. How he capitalizes, how he punctuates, how everything he likes is “beautiful,” how he lies about how popular he is, how he vacuously calls himself everyone’s “favorite president,” how he waffles, how he has taken to ending many of his messages with “Thank you for your attention to this matter.” Where that comes from, who knows? Then again, it comes from Trump, so who’s surprised?

Newsom’s trolls— with not a lower case letter to be seen— were about the failure in Texas to make its original deadline to set redistricting in motion, which all started when Trump said on CNBC two weeks ago, “We are entitled to five more seats.”

Such duplicitous nonsense. It couldn’t help but remind some of us of Trump’s pathetic plea to Georgia’s secretary of state after he lost the presidency in 2020: “I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”

So Newsom took it back to Trump.

“DONALD 'TACO' TRUMP, AS MANY CALL HIM, 'MISSED' THE DEADLINE!!!”

“Taco,” for the record, stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

“CALIFORNIA WILL NOW DRAW NEW, MORE 'BEAUTIFUL MAPS,' THEY WILL BE HISTORIC AS THEY WILL END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY (DEMS TAKE BACK THE HOUSE!). BIG PRESS CONFERENCE THIS WEEK WITH POWERFUL DEMS AND GAVIN NEWSOM — YOUR FAVORITE GOVERNOR — THAT WILL BE DEVASTATING FOR 'MAGA.' THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GN”

Do you think if he saw this, Donald Trump thought it was terribly clever and laughed?

Neither do I.

Then a second troll about the president.

“DONALD TRUMP, THE LOWEST POLLING PRESIDENT IN RECENT HISTORY, THIS IS YOUR SECOND-TO-LAST WARNING!!! (THE NEXT ONE IS THE LAST ONE!). STAND DOWN NOW OR CALIFORNIA WILL COUNTER-STRIKE (LEGALLY!) TO DESTROY YOUR ILLEGAL CROOKED MAPS IN RED STATES. PRESS CONFERENCE COMING — HOSTED BY AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR, GAVIN NEWSOM. FINAL WARNING NEXT. YOU WON’T LIKE IT!!! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.”

Newsom ended his string of satire with this:

“DONALD TRUMP (THE CRIMINAL PRESIDENT) GET READY FOR THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PAYBACK YOU’VE EVER SEEN!!!”

Until last week, about the only people who effectively teased Trump to embarrass the man (as if he’s capable of embarrassment) were late night TV talk hosts, and Andy Borowitz, the satirist here on Substack. Just for laughs, here’s one of Borowitz’s masterpieces last week about an imaginary petition from the citizens of Washington D.C.….

In 2016, Democrats listened to the moral authority of Michelle Obama who said, “When they go low, we go high.” The trouble is, it didn’t work. We got Donald Trump. In 2024 they did it again. Once more, we got Trump. Now, Democrats, and never-Trumpers too, using both strategy and satire, have to fight fire with fire, because nothing else has worked. Which is why the strategy Governor Newsom revealed this week about redistricting was even more important than his satire.

At a rally promoting his plan for an “Election Rigging Response Act,” Newsom announced that he’ll ask the California legislature to schedule a special election for this November for the purpose of approving new congressional district maps for the state that would tilt it even more to the Democrats, although if the Republicans call off their off-year gerrymandering crusade, so would he. But if they don’t, he said, “We can't stand back and watch this democracy disappear, district by district all across this country. We need to be firm in our resolve. We need to push back.”

That’s what fighting fire with fire means.

And it’s not just about California. Just as the Republicans are taking their gerrymandering operation to other states beyond Texas, Newsom, along with a few other like-minded governors, is taking the Democrats’ redistricting fight national. When Republicans pull tricks to steal a higher percentage of votes from what have been Democratic districts— basically by disenfranchising minority voters in Democrat-dominated cities— there is nowhere else to take it.

It’s worth noting, by the way, that while Newsom was speaking to his rally, armed and masked federal agents showed up, plainly just to intimidate, to prove that Trump’s troops are watching. As Newsom said afterwards, that’s “everything you need to know about Donald Trump’s America.”

Personally, I don’t know yet whether in 2028, Newsom will be my first choice for president if he runs— and every sign suggests he will. I don’t say that because he sometimes seems opportunistic. And I don’t say it because he’s the governor of a state that has messes of its own to clean up. For that, I cut him some slack because it might be fair to say that with the 39th biggest population in the world, and as its fourth biggest economy— only the U.S., China, and Germany surpass it— California today is at least partially unmanageable.

I say it because in an issues debate in late 2023 on Fox with Florida’s Ron DeSantis, Newsom wasn’t the best debater on the stage.

But still, lest we forget, Donald Trump transparently lied during his debates, he ran businesses that went several times into bankruptcy, he stiffed people who worked for him, and he paid hush money to a porn actress, then was convicted for lying about it. Yet he’s now the man in the White House.

So like I say, maybe I will cut Newsom some slack because I like his style. “It’s not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil and talk about the way the world should be,” he told the rally in Los Angeles. “We have got to meet fire with fire.”

And he’s doing it with mettle and mockery.

His final satirical post last Thursday went like this:

“DONALD IS FINISHED—HE IS NO LONGER ‘HOT.’ FIRST THE HANDS (SO TINY) AND NOW ME—GAVIN C. NEWSOM—HAVE TAKEN AWAY HIS ‘STEP.’ MANY ARE SAYING HE CAN’T EVEN DO THE ‘BIG STAIRS’ ON AIR FORCE ONE ANYMORE—USES THE LITTLE BABY STAIRS NOW. SAD.

“YOU’RE WELCOME FOR LIBERATION DAY, AMERICA! DONNIE J MISSED ‘THE DEADLINE’ (WHOOPS!) AND NOW I RUN THE SHOW. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! —GCN”

Donald Trump might not find it funny— it’s never clear whether he finds anything funny— but he’d better pay attention to the matter, because Gavin Newsom is breathing fire, and he’s not cooling off.

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 39-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.

You can learn more at GregDobbs.net