California Gov. Gavin Newsom just delivered one of the most explosive blows yet in his long-running feud with President Donald Trump — and the internet instantly understood why Trump spent Thursday morning in a blind, furious spiral.
Hours after Trump erupted online demanding death sentences for six Democratic lawmakers who filmed a video reminding U.S. troops they must refuse illegal orders, Newsom responded with a nuclear-level clapback: a 14-image collage of Trump’s deepest Epstein-tainted associations — featuring not just Trump and Jeffrey Epstein but Melania Trump smiling alongside Ghislaine Maxwell.
Trump had already been raging online for hours when Newsom dropped the post. Trump blasted the lawmakers as “traitors,” accused them of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR,” reposted demands to “HANG THEM,” and warned that failing to punish them would end the country.
The president’s fury came the morning after he signed a bipartisan bill compelling the Justice Department to release the long-blocked Epstein investigation files within 30 days — a signature he had publicly resisted all year.
Newsom didn’t miss the timing.
“With political violence on the rise, it’s outrageous, vile, and disgusting for the President to amplify calls for hangings. And it’s also obviously an attempt to distract from this,” Newsom wrote — placed directly above the 14-photo collage showing the Trumps partying, posing, and socializing with Epstein and Maxwell over multiple years and venues.
Epstein died in a Manhattan jail in 2019, and Maxwell is living it up at a minimum security prison in Texas, where she was moved after speaking this summer with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — Trump’s former personal lawyer — about the Epstein files.
While isolated photos of Trump and Epstein have circulated before, the concentrated series — with Melania appearing comfortably among Epstein’s inner circle — gave the clapback an extra sting.
Social media exploded with Newsom’s post receiving more 300,000 views and thousands of reposts.
“He also ask for people to stop talking about the Epstein files bc he was signing the papers but HE continues to name Democrats he says are in the files. This man is screwed up. His brain is in his a$$ the reason so much shit is coming out of his mouth,” this X user boldly proclaimed in response to Newsom’s post.
This X user agreed, “This is what’s got him so angry. He knows he’s a pedophile and soon we all will”
And yet another compared called out Trump’s hypocrisy. “On 6 January 2021 an act of sedition took place at and on the US Capitol. The traitors were found tried & sentenced to imprisonment under the law. The current POTUS Trump pardoned those felons. By so doing he has been confirmed his support of their treason.”
“Trump is going nuclear. It was always coming,” one commentor warned on X.
Even as Newsom’s collage dominated social media, new developments added to the chaos.
NBC News confirmed that the FBI had reached out to all six Democratic lawmakers to request interviews regarding the intent behind their video — a move that raised eyebrows given Trump’s public demands for their arrest.
The lawmakers emphasized that their message merely echoed the Uniform Code of Military Justice: service members must refuse unlawful orders.
One of the six Democrats, Sen. Elissa Slotkin agreed with Newsom that Trump’s rage is merely a distraction from both the Epstein files and his failing ecomony.
Trump has since denied he was calling for the deaths of the six Democrats, but said in the same breath that “in the old days, if you said a thing like that, that was punishable by death.”
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“Trying to distract us from the big stories of last week which were the Epstein files and then the economy …. it was kind of amazing considering the American public isn’t stupid,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The President has spent months, in fact much of his first year in office, refusing to release the files even though he campaigned on a promise to do just that. Last week the House Oversight Committee released a trove of Epstein texts and email communications showing Trump did in fact know about Epstein’s criminal operations involving young girls despite years of denials.
