Gavin Newsom is raising questions about a Mar-a-Lago event in which participants wearing dog masks were compared to “furries.”
The California governor responded quizzically to videos and photos from the American Humane Society’s Hero Dog Awards Gala at Mar-a-Lago last Friday. Dancers at the red carpet fundraiser for law enforcement and first responder dogs were seen wearing 18th-century formalwear along with masks of various breeds of canines.
“Why is Donald Trump hosting a FURRY PARTY???” Newsom’s press office wondered on X.
Newsom followed that up with an apparent AI rendering of Trump, 79, in what appeared to be a lion’s costume—minus the head, which the president was holding—while surrounded by a group of people dressed up as dogs during a swanky gathering. His caption: “The whole dictator cosplay thing is starting to make sense.”
Opens in new windowThe White House referred a Daily Beast inquiry about Newsom’s comment to the Trump Organization, which did not immediately respond.
“Furries” are people who pretend to be animals, often by wearing costumes. Critics of last week’s event noted that those in the Furry community have often been depicted as having sexual motivations.
Trump spoke at the AHS event later in the evening, according to an Instagram post by Kelly Henry, the senior editor at Florida Weekly Palm Beach.
As for Newsom’s reference to Trump’s “dictator cosplay,” earlier on Thursday, the president threatened to impose martial law in Minnesota in a Truth Social post. It is a threat Trump has issued before, to widespread concerns about federal overreach.
“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Trump wrote on the platform.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have faced backlash from locals amid their increased enforcement efforts in Minneapolis. An agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good there last week, and on Wednesday, another agent shot a Venezuelan man who is recovering in the hospital.
Because of the ongoing ICE operation, Newsom is not the only governor to criticize Trump and his administration.
“Armed, masked, undertrained ICE agents are going door-to-door, ordering people to point out where their neighbors of color live,” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said on Wednesday. “It’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.”
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