Gavin Newsom fired off a cutting “dementia” dig at President Donald Trump minutes after the president’s latest Oval Office rant reignited their long-running feud.
During the briefing, Trump again claimed California’s wildfire woes stem from officials refusing to “let the water come down from the Pacific Northwest,” insisting that if the spigots were opened, “all the sprinklers would’ve worked.” Newsom pounced on X with a screenshot of an AI chatbot query, “Do people with dementia repeat the same falsehoods over and over?”, and a not-so-subtle wink toward Trump’s recycled talking points.
https://t.co/qZw9UXmBlf pic.twitter.com/CSGyoDXXv7
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) August 26, 2025
Newsom has made an art of trolling Trump, mirroring the president’s bombast with meme-heavy posts, jabs, and all-caps taunts designed to get under his skin. In recent weeks, the California governor’s online volleys have grown sharper and more frequent, part of a deliberate strategy to meet Trump on his own turf, and beat him there. French daily observers noted the shift to “mirror” tactics, while local outlets chronicled Newsom’s gleeful foray into Trump-style merch with a “Patriot Shop” drop.
The substance behind the snark matters here. Trump’s “turn on the water” claim has been debunked repeatedly by California officials and fact-checkers. In January, the president falsely declared the U.S. military had “TURNED ON THE WATER” from the Pacific Northwest, state water regulators quickly said there was no such intervention and that reservoir levels were strong. Local and national outlets echoed the pushback, noting that California’s major reservoirs were at or above historic averages and that wildfire water-pressure issues were localized infrastructure problems, not a statewide shortage.
FACT: Under @CAGovernor Newsom’s leadership, the number of @CAL_FIRE personnel has nearly doubled since 2019 (from 5,829 to 10,741) .
FACT: Water reservoirs in Southern California are at record levels. https://t.co/Trhr4rZffv
There is no shortage of water in Southern… https://t.co/AoIL9htElt— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) January 10, 2025
Newsom’s press office has leaned into receipts over rhetoric, blasting out graphs and data points to swat down Trump’s claims in real time. One widely shared post stressed that Southern California reservoirs were at “record levels,” a far cry from Trump’s narrative of throttled supply. The broader point: whatever the politics, there was no shadowy valve the military could “flip” to douse suburban rooftops, because the plumbing of California’s water system simply doesn’t work that way.
Still, the personal-health jabs are a new twist. Newsom’s AI-screenshot bit, implying that compulsively repeating false claims is a red flag, sparked predictable outrage from MAGA surrogates and a sharp rebuttal from the White House. Conservative media rushed to defend the president’s stamina, Newsom and his allies countered with video compilations of Trump’s verbal stumbles and conspicuous bruising, inviting a fresh round of “who’s fit?” sniping. It’s ugly, but it’s also the political arena both men have chosen.
For Newsom, the exchange amounted to a two-fer: fact-checking Trump’s wildfire-water mythology while needling him where he’s thinnest-skinned. For Trump, it was another prime-time reminder that his West Coast adversary won’t let a claim go unchallenged, and will mock while he’s at it. The governor’s allies say the trolling works because it pairs viral punchlines with verifiable facts, critics call it juvenile and beneath the office. Either way, the feud keeps dominating the feed, and both men seem to prefer it that way.
Bottom line: Trump keeps repeating a faulty water script, and Newsom keeps torching it with data, and, now, dementia-tinged sarcasm. In a politics-as-performance era, the clash is less a policy seminar than a meme war with real-world stakes. And for one noisy cycle, at least, Newsom’s AI-assisted clapback won the internet.
