‘Take your dementia meds, grandpa’: Newsom takes aim at Trump over ‘lie’ about California’s wildfire rebuild

California Governor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday tore into Donald Trump on social media, accusing the president of “making things up” and telling a “straight up lie” about the state’s effort to rebuild after devastating wildfires in Los Angeles at the beginning of the year.

The back-and-forth began when Trump claimed in a post on Truth Social that Gavin “Newscum” was nearing approval on a plan to build low-income housing in Pacific Palisades, a high-end neighborhood that saw some of the worst damage in the fires.

“How unfair is that to the people that have suffered so much!” Trump continued. “Newscum allowed their houses to burn by not accepting Hundreds of Millions of Gallons of Water from the Pacific Northwest, and now, the Low Income Housing starts rising long before he gets Permits for California Citizens to rebuild, but long after the Federal Permits were issued.”

Newsom, who has mimicked Trump’s sharp-elbowed social media style in recent months, soon fired back.

“Take your dementia meds, grandpa,” the governor’s office wrote on X. “You are making things up again.”

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The post from Newsom’s office claimed Trump’s message had at least five lies, saying there was no new state effort to build low-income housing in the Palisades and water from the Pacific Northwest doesn’t even reach California hydrants. The governor’s office added that the city and county of Los Angeles have approved nearly 900 rebuilding permits, while there’s no such thing as a federal housing permit.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had a similar take, responding to Trump’s diatribe with a one-word post on X: “Lies.”

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Trump’s comments appear to reference a July plan from the state to release $101 million in funds to fast-track the creation of affordable multifamily housing units across areas impacted by the fires.

Officials at the time said the plan would “galvanize the collective public-private response to the wildfires in Los Angeles County, expediting and expanding opportunities to build affordable housing for low-income residents.”

Newsom, long rumored to be pursuing a 2028 presidential run, began relentlessly mocking Trump online this summer, often adopting the president’s social media signatures such as all-caps rants and derisive nicknames.

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The approach, which has helped Newsom surge in hypothetical primary polls, comes amid more substantive clashes between the Golden State and the White House.

Newsom in August signed a bill to pursue a mid-decade redistricting plan in California that could add up to five Democratic seats in Congress, in response to a Trump-backed plan in Texas, to add an equal number of GOP seats ahead of the 2026 midterms.