California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been on a roll lately, unloading one epic clapback after another at Donald Trump. Now “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary may be wishing he’d stayed out of it after inserting himself into the feud and finding out the hard way what happens when you step into Newsom’s line of fire.
The MAGA millionaire, known as Mr. Wonderful, was recently defending Trump’s federal takeover of Washington and his threats to send troops into Democrat-run cities like Chicago and Baltimore.
“We haven’t even mentioned war zones like downtown San Francisco, or Hollywood or L.A.,” O’Leary told CNN “Newsnight” host Abby Phillip during the Aug. 26 episode of the show. “They are war zones. You can’t walk outside at night, period.”
“I don’t give a damn if it’s the Army, the National Guard, the FBI. I couldn’t care less,” he added, “and I can guarantee you 80, 90, 100 percent of the people there don’t care either. They just want to walk outside.”
Newsom, who has mocked and trolled Trump for weeks now, added O’Leary, a Canadian businessman and investor, to his list. But this takedown required very little effort. Social media did most of the work after.
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Newsom shared two headlines on X from the “Los Angeles Times” and ABC7 showing homicide rates in each city had dropped to the lowest levels in more than six decades, over a clip of O’Leary trash-talking those cities. He offered no additional text to O’Leary, just cold hard facts.
“L.A. on pace to see lowest homicide total in nearly 60 years as killings plummet,” the Times reported, with ABC7 saying, “SAN FRANCISCO HOMICIDE RATES HIT 60-YEAR LOW, MAYOR SAYS.”
Newsom was the first to deal with Trump’s deployment of federal troops to a large city earlier this summer when the president sent the National Guard and federal agents into Los Angeles against state officials’ wishes to help quell protests over immigration arrests and deportations.
The governor has called Trump’s use of federal troops “political theater” and said the president was “using service members as props in the federal government’s propaganda machine.”
Mr. Wonderful felt the full force of the web with his comments.
One user mused, “all these outside agitators yapping on goofy a** cable news every night about cities that carry ~75% of the US GDP. meanwhile in dumafukaville, TN some coal miner’s daughter went 3 rounds with some Napoleon HS rassler and his cousin got his trailer robbed by some meth heads
“I’d threaten to deport him back to Canada,” this Threads poster commented.
Some helped give Newsom ammunition with a screenshot of an article referencing O’Leary’s legal drama over a boating accident that killed two people.
“He just had to put his two cents in. That’s O’Leary.” another user chimed in.
Another joked, “That makes Newsome a wartime Gov!”
“Imagine calling yourself “Mr. Wonderful” without a shred of shame,” this Threads user stated.
San Francisco reported just 33 homicides in 2024, a 34 percent drop from the previous year and the lowest level since the 1960s, the Daily Beast reported. City officials said at the time that the lower numbers were due to greater crime prevention efforts and community support.
Homicide rates in L.A. have also declined, 20 percent since January and before Trump sent in federal troops.
This isn’t the first time the TV personality has trashed California and specifically San Francisco. Back in 2024, he called the Golden State the “worst-managed” and “most uncompetitive” state in the U.S. during an interview on Fox Business. And zeroing in on San Francisco, he called the city “an absolute war zone.”
He also used it as an example of “how you can get to being a rat hole over 10 years.”
