Someone’s been putting an extra espresso shot in Gavin Newsom‘s coffee lately. The Governor of California has become a leading critic of the Trump administration, largely due to his public stand against Trump sending National Guard troops onto the streets of Los Angeles to intimidate residents and sow fear.
Lately, he’s been openly mocking and imitating Trump’s all-caps posting style on social media, with his comms team apparently throwing up their hands and letting Newsom go nuts with the parody. At least in terms of engagement, it appears to be working.
Now Newsom has pivoted and taken aim at Florida’s Ron “Meatball” DeSantis. The widely despised charisma vacuum recently appeared on Sean Hannity’s show to throw some punches at California and Newsom. DeSantis said:
“I do have to acknowledge that under Gavin Newsom’s leadership, California is number one in a lot of things. Number one in homelessness, number one in public defecation, number one in tent cities, number one for highest income tax, number one for highest sales tax, number one for highest gas tax, and they have the highest electricity rates in the continental United States. So they are number one in a lot of things—just not the things you would want to be number one in.”
Newsom didn’t take this lying down, quickly pointing out that California is number one in many categories of critical importance to the nation’s economy:
"wrong categories"
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) August 26, 2025
– 4th largest economy in the world
– #1 in manufacturing
– #1 in farming
– #1 in new business starts.
– #1 for tech and VC investments
– #1 for Fortune 500 companies
– #1 public higher education system https://t.co/LeqY6Pkhkj
The U.S. needs California
Newsom is right to defend California. His state is the single largest contributor to the U.S. economy of all other states, accounting for approximately 14.2% of the total U.S. GDP ($29.184 trillion). In second place is Texas, trailing behind with $2.709 trillion (9.3% of U.S. GDP).
And as for DeSantis’ Florida? That trails still further behind Texas, contributing around a third of what California does to the nation’s economy. Despite all that, facts and evidence and all that stuff is extremely out of fashion under Trump, with MAGA more than happy to write off California as a lawless hellhole hellbent on undermining the security of the union.
If they really believe that, give California independence and let it become its own country! That would immediately make it the fifth-largest economy in the world, coming in after Germany and before India, the United Kingdom, and France!
