The California Democrat’s remarks come after the president had doubted his own prospects for reaching heaven.
STOCKTON, California — Gov. Gavin Newsom suggested that President Donald Trump’s allies are at risk of not getting into heaven, saying they’ll “have a lot to reconcile at the pearly gates.”
“To see people in positions of power and influence do absolutely nothing when they must know better — and I believe they do … Boy, they’re going to have a lot to reconcile at the pearly gates,” Newsom said at a press conference Wednesday during the California Economic Summit in Stockton, part of California’s Central Valley.
Newsom’s remarks come after Trump himself recently expressed doubt about his own prospects for entering heaven.
“I mean, you know, I’m being a little cute. I don’t think there’s anything going to get me in heaven. I think I’m not maybe heaven-bound,” Trump told reporters last week aboard Air Force One. “I’m not sure I’m going to be able to make heaven.”
Newsom — a likely 2028 contender, who has relished his role as one of Trump’s most outspoken critics — at the press conference specifically called out House Speaker Mike Johnson, asking: “Where is Speaker Johnson? Where is the outrage by what the hell is going on in this country? This is not the United States of America.”
He added that Republican leaders’ “obedience to these authoritarian tendencies may be the most disgraceful of all aspects of this moment.”
The California Democrat also took aim at Trump following media reports that the president is sending more than 100 federal troops to the San Francisco Bay Area, just outside of the city where Trump has recently threatened to send the National Guard.
The governor called the move “predictable” and part of the “authoritarian playbook.”
“You announce your intention to send the military to streets … doing domestic policing operations, you wildly overstate or completely make up crime statistics that are not real, that do not justify such action,” Newsom said. “And for this administration, you send first masked men to the cities that you want to militarize.”
Newsom also poked fun at those he sees as “bending the knee” to Trump, promoting new products that he aims to sell on the “Patriot” website he set up to parody the president.
“You will be seeing on my Patriot site new knee pads that I’ll be sending out,” he said, specifically calling out CEOs, media companies, law firms and universities like the University of Virginia, which recently reached a deal with the Justice Department over alleged civil rights violations and discrimination.
The White House press office could not be immediately reached for comment.