THE GREAT DICTATOR

Newsom Slams ‘Dictator’ Trump’s Latest Blue City Takeover

The president is sending CBP officers to San Francisco.

“America’s Favorite Governor” is calling out Donald Trump—again—following the president’s deployment of federal agents to yet another California city.

California Governor Gavin Newsom isn’t keeping his feelings quiet about the president’s decision to send more than 100 federal agents to the Bay Area as part of the White House’s ongoing immigration crackdown

In a video posted to social media, Newsom condemned the move, which is just the latest example of the Trump administration sending federal agents into blue cities.

“This is right out of the dictator’s handbook,” Newsom said. “Donald Trump does this over and over again; he says he’s going to send in the National Guard to address ‘uncontrollable’ crime rates, which are fictitious.”

The governor went on to explain why he sees the president’s moves as being inherently authoritarian in nature, explaining, “First, he needs to create the conditions for anxiety. He needs to create the conditions that he can ‘then solve for.‘ So what does he do? He sends out masked men, he sends out border patrol, he sends out ICE, creates anxiety and fear in the community so that he can lay claim to solving for that by sending in the [National] Guard in the first place.”

“This is no different than the arsonist putting out the fire,” Newsom continued. “We need to call that out and we cannot play his game.”

In another video posted to social media, Newsom discussed California’s response to Trump’s maneuvers. “We’re gonna be fierce in terms of our response, we’re gonna be focused. Quite literally: this is the lawsuit that I will file within a nanosecond of any efforts to send the military to one of America’s great cities, San Francisco,” Newsom said, holding up what appears to be a legal document.

The San Francisco Chronicle first reported on Wednesday that more than 100 federal agents, including many from Customs and Border Protection, had been dispatched to a U.S. Coast Guard base in the East Bay and were expected to begin arriving on Thursday.

On Sunday, the president told Fox News, “We’re going to San Francisco and we’ll make it great. It’ll be great again.”

The deployment mirrors other immigration crackdowns in blue cities around the country, including in Los Angeles, where ICE agents were joined by 2,000 National Guard troops in a crackdown on anti-ICE protests in June.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told the Daily Beast, “As the Secretary said on Monday, DHS is targeting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens—including murderers, rapists, gang members, pedophiles, and terrorists—in cities such as Portland, Chicago, Memphis and San Francisco. As it does every day, DHS law enforcement will enforce the laws of our nation.”

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie condemned the deployment in a Wednesday press conference, saying, “In cities across the country, masked immigration officials are deployed to use aggressive enforcement tactics that instill fear so people don’t feel safe going about their daily life.”

Lurie continued, adding, “These tactics are designed to incite backlash, chaos and violence, which are then used as an excuse to deploy military personnel. They are intentionally creating a dangerous situation in the name of public safety.”

Lurie also announced that he has issued an executive order that directs city officials and departments to coordinate their response to the deployment of federal agents in San Francisco. Amongst other actions, the order directs the City Attorney’s Office to pursue legal action against the Trump administration when necessary.

Newsom echoed Lurie’s message for residents to avoid taking the Trump administration’s bait, encouraging people to “help keep yourself and your communities safe” and urging them to “remain peaceful” in the face of increasing federal presence in their neighborhoods.

“Violence and vandalism are exactly what they’re looking for to invoke chaos,” Newsom wrote in a post on X.

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Catherine BourisReporter

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