Donald Trump 'Amazed' Gavin Newsom Might Run for President as He Labels California Governor 'Incompetent'

Donald Trump just fired off some fresh shots at Gavin Newsom.

Reacting to the California governor's possible 2028 presidential bid, Trump, 79, told an outlet during an Oval Office interview on Friday, January 23, "I’m amazed Gavin wants to run for office."

Slamming Newsom's leadership, he bluntly declared, "Gavin's incompetent," before adding, "I used to get along with him, but now it’s sort of a hopeless situation."

"People love the dream of California, but they hate what’s happening to them," the president claimed, arguing that the Golden State doesn't have "proper leadership" with Newsom, 58, at the helm.

Trump's blistering remarks come weeks after he announced a fraud investigation would be launched in California, leading the governor to call the president a "deranged, habitual liar whose relationship with reality ended years ago."

"He spends his days posting whatever garbage his shriveled little brain can cough up — and Fox News dutifully treats it like the Lord’s scripture," Newsom responded in a January 6 X post.

Per RealClearPolitics survey averages, Newsom is leading the polling for the 2028 Democratic presidential primary, with 24 percent support among Democrats compared to former Vice President Kamala Harris's 21 percent.

But Trump thinks Newsom's track record will hurt him on the campaign trail, citing specifically his high-speed rail project intended to connect two of California's most biggest cities.

"He has the train, the train to nowhere, that was supposed to be a simple train that went from San Francisco to Los Angeles,” the POTUS said. "It’s the greatest cost runover that I’ve ever seen."

"I could have built that thing, and I could have built that thing in one year," he added.

The $135 billion rail project, America’s most expensive train project to date, was supposed to be completed in 2020 but ran into funding problems.

Though Newsom boasted it was "back on track" during his State of the State address on January 8. "Speaking of tracks, we’re finally laying them," he said.

Trump confirmed that he and Newsom had words during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, recently, but didn't divulge any details of their conversation. "I saw him in Davos," he said. "I spoke to him. I spoke to him fine."

Outlets reported that Newsom slammed world leaders at the forum on Tuesday, January 20, for a "pathetic" response to the Trump administration's recent agenda, particularly with respect to acquiring Greenland from Denmark.

"I can’t take this complicity," Newsom said. "People are rolling over. I should’ve brought a bunch of kneepads for all the world leaders."

In response, Trump wrote via Truth Social on January 22, "[Newsom] should not be at Davos running around screaming for the attention of Foreign leaders, and embarrassing our country."

"He made a mockery of himself, and everybody, including his staff and knows it," he said.