California Governor Gavin Newsom took aim at President Donald Trump’s mental acuity after the president veered into a peculiar aside about the difference between “sea” and “see.”
Trump made the remark during a White House Mother’s Day event on Wednesday, slipping into the tangent while discussing crime.
“You see drug traffic coming into our country is way down,” he told a crowd of military mothers gathered in the East Room. “And by sea, by sea, by ocean, by the water.”
“You know a lot of people say ‘what do you mean by sea?’ Is it see, like vision? No it’s sea, S-E-A,” the 79-year-old president continued.
Shortly after, Newsom took to X to mock the president and challenge him to a cognitive test, mimicking the all-caps, combative style Trump often uses on Truth Social.
“‘LITTLE D'S’ BRAIN IS DECLINING RAPIDLY IN REAL TIME,” the Democratic governor wrote. “TODAY HE WAS CONFUSED BY THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ‘SEE’ AND ‘SEA.’ VERY SAD!”
“I HEREBY CHALLENGE GRANDPA TO A LIVE COGNITIVE TEST ON NATIONAL TELEVISION,” Newsom wrote.
He added that Fox News host Sean Hannity could serve as moderator and said he would even grant the president three lifelines (Hannity previously moderated a debate between Newsom and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2023).
"’PERSON, MAN, CAMERA, TV, SQUIRREL, ELEPHANT, GIRAFFE,’” he continued. “LET’S SEE WHO PASSES!!!”
On Monday, Trump boasted about acing cognitive tests, describing one portion in which he was asked to identify a squirrel from a group of animals.
When asked for comment by The Daily Beast, White House spokesman Davis Ingle issued a scathing rebuke of the governor.
“Gavin Newscum is the worst governor in America, and he also may be the dumbest,” Ingle said. “President Trump’s sharpness, unmatched energy, and historic accessibility stand in stark contrast to what we saw during the last administration when Democrats and other lunatics like Newscum intentionally covered up Joe Biden’s serious mental and physical decline from the American people.”
The Independent has reached out to the White House.
It’s far from the first clash between the Democratic governor and the Republican president. The pair regularly exchange barbs.
Newsom, viewed by some as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, has lambasted the president on a host of issues, including gas prices, the Iran war and his handling of the Epstein files.
In the past two weeks, he’s labeled Trump a “moron,” a “HISTORIC LOSER,” and the “King of Bull****.”
Trump lashed out at Newsom in a Truth Social post on May 2, describing him as “an admittedly low-IQ person,” “dumb,” and “essentially incompetent.”
