President Donald Trump got a massive red-ink fact check on Tuesday by California Gov. Gavin Newsom's press office.
The president had taken to his Truth Social platform earlier in the day to attack Newsom.
"Shockingly, I have just learned, that Gavin Newscum, the Governor of California, is in final stages of approval to build Low Income Housing in Pacific Palisades," wrote Trump. "How unfair is that to the people that have suffered so much! 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. Lee Zeldin, EPA Administrator, and I, as President, have done the job, and produced all Permits long before anybody expected that to happen."
"Unfortunately, the Governor of California and Mayor Karen Bass failed you," Trump continued. "Gavin Newscum’s plan to build Low Income Housing (at the Super Luxury Pacific Palisades Fire Site) is what caused the destruction of the Late, Great New York City Mayor John Lindsay’s Political Career — and John Lindsay was a Republican."
None of what Trump said there is true, the Newsom press office X account swiftly pointed out.
"Take your dementia meds, grandpa. You are making things up again," said the post, inking up Trump's "truth" to point out all the false claims.
For starters, noted Newsom's press team, there is no basis to the claim that there is approval to build "low income housing" in fire-damaged neighborhoods — in fact, the mayor of Los Angeles went out of her way to exempt Pacific Palisades from a state law that lets single-family lots be rebuilt as duplexes. There is also no infrastructure to pump water from the Pacific Northwest to Los Angeles, and "federal permits" for housing are not a thing that exists.
Newsom has emerged as a major Democratic leader in recent weeks, between his retaliation against Texas Republicans' mid-decade gerrymander and his new push of repeatedly trolling Trump.