California Gov. Gavin Newsom, left, met with U.S. President Donald Trump, right, in January. The two are at odds over Mr. Trump's move to deploy the military to Los Angeles as residents protest ICE.Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press
One is the quintessential New Yorker, the other, the archetypical Californian.
One has yanked the Republicans rightward, the other is the personification of the leftward lurch of the Democrats.
One was criticized for insensitivity after tossing paper towels to hurricane victims at a Puerto Rico relief centre, the other was pilloried for poor judgment for dining indoors at the swanky French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley in defiance of his own COVID restrictions.
To make this personal: One of them has hair the colour of Kraft French salad dressing, the other possesses hair that resembles salt and pepper spilling out of a Peppermill Tremblay dispenser. And one of them almost was the father-in-law of the television news personality Kimberly Guilfoyle, for a time engaged to Donald Trump Jr. The other is the ex-husband of Kimberly Guilfoyle, whom he divorced in 2006.
President Donald Trump and Governor Gavin Newsom of California − entangled in a battle over migrants, civil liberties and crime − are a complicated set of combatants.
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Mr. Trump, the one with the populist identity, is a graduate of the Ivy League’s University of Pennsylvania (with an endowment of US$22.3-billion and with a Nov. 15 football game against Harvard, which Mr. Trump is hoping to cripple financially). Mr. Newsom, the one with the elitist identity, is a graduate of Santa Clara University (with an endowment of US$1.5-billion and hasn’t played American collegiate football since 1992).
Mr. Trump has suggested that Mr. Newsom might be imprisoned, reprising and revising one of his favourite lines from the 2016 presidential election (“Lock him up”). In response, Mr. Newsom has channelled Clint Eastwood in Sudden Impact (“Go ahead. Make my day.”)
Mr. Trump is playing his role as it were in a reality-television show (American Ninja Warrior). Mr. Newsom, governor of the state with countless sound stages and movie lots, seems caught in an episode of reality television himself (Survivor).
“These two are always on stage and aware of it,” said Martin Kaplan, a former studio executive who is director of the University of Southern California’s Norman Lear Center, which examines the interchange between entertainment, society and politics. “These are people who do their best to make the spotlight follow them.”
Now the two are in the spotlight in a dramatic dispute over both values and tactics.
Mr. Trump argues that the violence in Los Angeles is an insurrection that threatens civil peace and that requires both the National Guard, a state-based military force, which Mr. Trump mobilized over the objection of the Governor, as well as the deployment of the Marines, who arrived in the city Tuesday.
Mr. Trump used a speech at Fort Bragg ostensibly to recognize the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army to denounce the protesters in Los Angeles as a 'foreign enemy.'
The Associated Press
Mr. Newsom believes that Mr. Trump has exaggerated the dangers − “fanned the flames,” is his characterization − and is using it as a blunt instrument to extend executive power in a situation that state and local personnel can handle.
“The L.A. Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department and 44 other police agencies in L.A. County are well-equipped to handle this peacefully and effectively without interference from the federal government,” said Robert Saltzman, a former member of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners. “Things were calm before the federal government got involved. Since then, they’ve done nothing but create problems.”
Mr. Newsom considers the President a tyrannical threat to democratic principles. Mr. Trump considers the Governor a blue-state progressive and − to resuscitate a phrase Richard Nixon once employed to describe Ramsey Clark, Lyndon B. Johnson’s attorney-general − a conscientious objector in the war against crime.
“The very incompetent ‘Governor,’ Gavin Newscum, and ‘Mayor,’ Karen Bass, should be saying, ‘THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP, YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL,” Mr. Trump said on his Truth Social platform. “WE WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT YOU, SIR.”
Democrats feel quite the opposite.
“Newsom is trying to calm the situation down and Trump is trying to stir things up and portraying all of L.A. in combat,” said Robert Shrum, a veteran Democratic political consultant. “That’s entirely false.”
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The conflict between them − which both believe is but the first front of a wider war over migrants and civil liberties − has immense political implications.
Mr. Newsom knows the President is an effective foil in a state Mr. Trump lost three times in a row; Hillary Clinton defeated him in California by a two-to-one margin in 2016. Mr. Trump knows the Governor has presidential ambitions. Both know this episode is the political equivalent of a drama performance in New Haven, Conn., which over the years has provided trial runs for such Broadway shows as Oklahoma! and My Fair Lady.
Speaking of the prospect of arresting Mr. Newsom, Mr. Trump said, “I think it’s great. Gavin likes the publicity.” Mr. Newsom clearly is portraying himself not only at the centre of a storm but also as a national leader − an important moment for him and for a party that, after the 2024 defeat of then-vice-president Kamala Harris, herself a former California attorney-general, has been adrift.
“This is about all of us. This is about you,” Mr. Newsom said, addressing residents of other states. “California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next.” He said Mr. Trump “wants to be bound by no law or constitution, perpetuating a unified assault on American tradition.”
Their conflict is itself part of an American tradition.
When governor Orval Faubus mobilized the Arkansas National Guard to prevent integration of the Little Rock Central High School, president Dwight Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne Division. John F. Kennedy federalized the National Guard in Mississippi and did so twice in Alabama to enforce school desegregation.
But after the 1965 “Bloody Sunday” violence at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., governor George Wallace told Mr. Johnson that the state “is unable and refuses to provide for the safety and welfare” of civil-rights activists. In this occasion, the governor and president both deployed military forces.
There is no such agreement today in California.