California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) trolled President Trump amid their feud over immigration raids on Tuesday with a post on Instagram featuring the Taylor Swift song, “You Need to Calm Down.”
In a 10-second video, Newsom seemed to knock the president for insulting him on social media, highlighting a key line of the song urging the president to “say it in the street,” rather than “say it in a tweet.”
The video opens with an image of Newsom speaking into a microphone, as he stands next to Trump in front of Air Force One. The song plays, “Say it in the street, that’s a knockout.”
As the song continues — “But you say it in a tweet, that’s a cop out” — the video shows a Truth Social post from the president knocking Newsom as “Newscum.”
Trump wrote, in the post, timestamped on Saturday: “If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”
The video pans to another image of the two men, who stand facing each other, as the governor points at Trump, holding a finger to the president’s chest.
“And I’m just like, ‘Hey, are you okay?’” the song continues, zooming in on Trump, as white text appears on the screen, “r u ok?”
The caption of the photo, posted from Newsom’s official “cagovernor” Instagram account, reads, “America’s keyboard warrior.”
It was posted Tuesday morning, as the war of words between the two men continued to heat up over the best way to quell protests in downtown Los Angeles and the surrounding area following demonstrations over recent domestic raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Trump deployed thousands of National Guard troops, federalizing state forces that would normally be under the purview of the governor. The move has prompted backlash among many Democrats, including Newsom who unsuccessfully sought legal recourse to block the move.
Their feud has only escalated since the Instagram video. In a late-night video on Tuesday, Newsom tore into Trump for interfering in California, saying, “This brazen abuse of power by a sitting President inflamed a combustible situation.”