Fox News’ Dana Perino criticized Gavin Newsom’s recent X activity mocking President Donald Trump on Monday, saying that the California governor is making a fool of himself — despite them mirroring the cadence and style of the president’s own posts.
Perino appeared to disregard the fact that the viral posts coming from the California governor’s office are copying the way Trump writes his missives on Truth Social. She called Newsom’s latest trend foolish and wondered if his wife was embarrassed and begging him to stop.
“You have to stop it with the Twitter thing. I don’t know where his wife is, if I were his wife, I would say, ‘You are making a fool of yourself, stop it,’” Perino said. “Do not let your staff tweet – and if you’re doing it yourself, put the phone away. He’s got a big job as governor of California, but if he wants an even bigger job, he has to be a little bit more serious.”
In a press conference last week, Newsom explained his strategy behind his new social trolling of the president. He hoped that the extreme, all-caps posting using language and exclamation points similar to Trump’s Truth Social posts opens up more scrutiny for how the President of United States is using social media.
“I hope it’s a wakeup call. The President of the United States — I’m sort of following his example. And if you’ve got issues with what I’m putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns about what he’s putting out as president,” the governor said at the end of the press conference.
He continued: “So to the extent it’s gotten some attention, I’m pleased. But I think the deeper question is: How have we allowed the normalization of his tweets, Truth Social posts over the course of the last many years to go without similar scrutiny and notice?”
Although Perino might not have connected the dots from Newsom’s posts to how Trump posts, plenty of other X users called the Fox News host out for not acknowledging the correlation.
“And now they get it,” one user wrote. “I’m certain Melania has tried.”
“These people can’t be this thick in reality right?” another wondered.
Newsom’s office, led be a group of unnamed staffers, first began trolling Trump with tweets fashioned after the president’s incendiary social media style last Tuesday.
