California Gavin Newsom had some fighting words for President Donald Trump that cut to the heart of the president’s perception of himself.
Trump has spent much of his second term fixated on construction projects, razing the East Wing of the White House to make room for a $400 million ballroom, closing the beleaguered Kennedy Center for renovations, and drawing up plans for a massive triumphal arch—all of which will reportedly bear Trump’s name.
The president and his team have repeatedly justified the various vanity projects by insisting the president is a “builder,” with Trump himself claiming that construction is relaxing for him because “I have been doing it all my life.”
Newsom, however, took issue with the “builder-in-chief” characterization.
“Breaking things is not strength. Tearing things down is not strength,” he told Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens during a Sunday event to promote his newly published memoir, Young Man in a Hurry.
“Any jackass can tear down a barn, but it takes a skilled carpenter to build one,” Newsom continued, quoting the legendary House Speaker Sam Rayburn. “Tearing things down is not strength. Trump is not a builder. He’s a jack—.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
Newsom has spent much of the last year as a thorn in the side of the Trump administration, trolling Trump in the president’s own rambling, all-caps communications style and calling out various members of his Cabinet, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Political insiders say his mix of viral trolling and high-profile policy speeches offers an alternative vision to Trump’s, and makes clear that he’s gearing up for a presidential run in 2028, though the governor says he hasn’t yet decided whether he will run.
He kicked off his book tour Saturday in Nashville, Tennessee, before continuing on to Georgia on Sunday and North Carolina on Monday.
Trump, meanwhile, has his hands full defending his construction projects in court.
A group of Vietnam War veterans has sued to block his “Arc de Trump,” the National Trust for Historic Preservation has sued to halt construction on his massive ballroom, and a member of the Kennedy Center board has challenged his Trump-centric rebranding of the arts venue.
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