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The Wannabe Leftist Trump: How Gavin Newsom Is Playing the Persecution Card

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16.06.2026

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Home – California Politics & News – The Wannabe Leftist Trump: How Gavin Newsom Is Playing the Persecution Card

The Wannabe Leftist Trump: How Gavin Newsom Is Playing the Persecution Card

Gavin Newsom would have you believe he is now the brave victim of a Trump-orchestrated reign of terror. In a self-pitying video released this week, the California governor melodramatically declared that he and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, had proudly joined “[President] Donald Trump’s hit list.”

Federal agents, he wailed, have been knocking on the doors of family, friends, and former employees. Grand juries are being “abused.” Investigators are digging through years of documents—not because they found crimes, he insists, but because they are simply trying to manufacture them. According to Newsom, the entire effort is raw political revenge for his repeated criticisms of Trump and his rumored interest in running for president in 2028.

This is Newsom’s calculated bid to become the Left’s Trump. He frames every legal pressure as a witch hunt, turns routine scrutiny into a badge of honor, and positions himself as the defiant champion who will lead the resistance. 

He hopes the “hit list” rhetoric, paired with the suggestion that Trump fears him as a genuine threat, will rally the progressive base, attract big donors, energize activists, and finally make him the Democratic Party’s Trump-like figure—resilient, victimized, and destined for the White House.

It won’t work. The parallels are hollow. Trump endured four criminal indictments, two impeachments, an FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, a public mugshot, gag orders, and novel legal theories pushed in hostile courts. His supporters rightly called it lawfare—the weaponization of justice by a politicized system.

Newsom faces nothing comparable. There have been no SWAT raids on his mansion, no agents rifling through his wife’s underwear drawer, and no Alvin Bragg-style press........

© The Daily Signal