Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) came full swing at President Donald Trump Saturday, claiming the president is lying to cover up his involvement in convicted sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein’s case.
“He’s lying to cover up his prior lies and then lying again. Now he doesn’t even know truth from fiction, and so look, he’s caught it red handed,” Newsom told popular left-wing influencer Brian Tyler Cohen in an interview that aired Saturday. “He’s in the files. We know it, period, full stop.”
Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi have received major backlash in the past few weeks over their handling of Epstein’s files after hyping them up, then failing to release more information. Many of those outraged are the president’s own supporters, who are beginning to turn on him over the issue.
Meanwhile, news outlets have been resurfacing old videos, photos and documents that suggest a close friendship between the president and Epstein.
“His biggest supporters may have been the difference in the election, and he turned on them. He has zero loyalty,” Newsom said.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Bondi informed Trump in May that his name was in the files related to Epstein’s case.
“He’s part of this cover up, and he has confused even the most ardent observers here. I mean, you can’t — the guy’s a pretzel on this issue. Every hour, he contradicts a statement,” Newsom told Cohen.
This week, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, now Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, met with Epstein’s co-conspirator and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.
The president told reporters that pardoning Maxwell is not something he has thought about, but noted that he is “allowed to do it.”
“This is sick stuff. This is sick,” Newsom said. “I mean, if you’re a conspiracy theorist, I mean, they’re going to turn me into one. Why the hell are we even talking to her? What, a pardon for what? No, seriously, for what?”
He added that Trump has seemed increasingly “unmoored” as speculation grows about his past relationship with Epstein.
“He’s lost a step,” Newsom said. “This is not the same Trump 1.0. This is, something’s off, increasingly off, and he’s getting, he’s unmoored in ways even by Trump’s standards I haven’t seen. I don’t want to overstate this moment, but you can’t understate. This is something, something ain’t right, as they say.”
Newsom went on to bash Trump over recent actions that some have speculated were intentional distractions from the Epstein scandal, such as threatening to strip Rosie O’Donnell of citizenship, vowing to put cane sugar in Coca-Cola, complaining about the name of the Washington Commanders and sharing a bizarre AI-generated video of Barack Obama being arrested.
“It reminds me of a punch drunk boxer. He’s just wildly flailing. He’s flailing. He’s just zigging and zagging. He’s desperate,” Newsom said. “He’s trying anything, trying to chum the waters, and it’s not working. And normally it works for him. It’s not working right now.”
The governor told Cohen that Trump is “going to have to do a lot more than he’s done in the past to be able to dig his way out of this.”