Newsom Leans Into L.A. Unrest to Position Himself as Leader of Opposition

LOS ANGELES—Gavin Newsom is, once again, in the eye of a tempest. “It is a profoundly important moment,” the California governor said in an interview Monday evening as protesters massed in the streets and U.S. Marines made their way to the state on the president’s orders.

It is also an important moment for Newsom, widely seen as a top potential Democratic presidential candidate, who has leaned into the conflict to position himself as the leader of the opposition. “Seven hundred brave men and women are being used as pawns in Trump’s war on the Constitution,” he told The Wall Street Journal of the Marine deployment, speaking from the Los Angeles County emergency operations center where he has been holed up helping coordinate the protest response. “Our Founding Fathers didn’t live and die for this.” 

Newsom traveled to Los Angeles on Sunday to try to quell sometimes-violent protests there, prompted by the Trump administration’s mass immigration arrests. On Monday, President Trump said Newsom should be arrested, calling him grossly incompetent. Newsom, in turn, accused Trump of “authoritarian overreach” and insisted the rule of law itself was at stake.

It is a moment of both opportunity and political peril for the two-term leader of the nation’s most-populous state, whom Trump has singled out to blame for the violence and rioting he says local officials have failed to control. Newsom’s pugilistic response to Trump’s provocations has gladdened the hearts of Democrats hungry for a crusader. But at a time when Newsom has attempted to moderate his image, playing to the Democratic base runs the risk of cementing his profile as a left-coast progressive and associating him with images of urban unrest.

Asked about his presidential aspirations, Newsom, who will leave office next year, didn’t deny he might seek higher office. “I’m not thinking about running, but it’s a path that I could see unfold,” he told the Journal. The 57-year-old said it was too early to make a decision and he would wait to see if the moment felt right.

Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that “Gavin likes the publicity, but I think it would be a great thing” to have Newsom arrested. Asked what crime Newsom could be arrested for, the president said, “I think his primary crime is running for governor because he’s done such a bad job.”

Newsom responded by daring Trump to arrest him. “Let’s go,” he told the Journal. “You need a scalp. You need to show you’re a tough guy. You need to show your base you’re going to own the libs. Why don’t you just get it over with? Arrest me—but stop attacking these vulnerable people.”

The White House believes it has the political advantage in taking a hard line against protesters and maximally pursuing its signature campaign promise of mass deportations of migrants who are in the country illegally. Many Democrats are also uneasy about being seen as defending chaos and disorder. Newsom has condemned violence, calling for “zero tolerance” for “agitators” who attack law enforcement—in contrast to former Vice President Kamala Harris, whose statement this week blamed Trump for “stoking fear” and defended the demonstrations as “overwhelmingly peaceful.”

“Violent rioters in Los Angeles…have attacked American law enforcement, set cars on fire, and fueled lawless chaos,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “President Trump rightfully stepped in to protect federal law-enforcement officers.”

The governor’s aggressive stance toward Trump comes as he has seemed to tack to the center in recent months, starting a new podcast in which he dissects where his own party has gone astray, with guests including MAGA stalwarts Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk. He drew blowback from the left for agreeing with Kirk that allowing transgender women in sports was “unfair.” He has also sought to roll back his state’s provision of healthcare for migrants in the country illegally and called for the clearing of homeless encampments.

Asked at a recent press conference whether these stances constituted an attempt to moderate his image for political purposes, he said he had “always been a hardheaded pragmatist.”

Newsom surely would rather not be in this situation, said Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at UC Berkeley and the University of Southern California. But he is an instinctive politician who is seizing the moment in signature fashion. “In the post-Biden era, Newsom knows that the Democratic Party is looking for leaders who fight,” Schnur said. “He knows he gets under Trump’s skin, so he uses it to his advantage by pushing back in a personal way. I think he recognizes that the political ramifications of the confrontation with Trump can work to his benefit.”

The men’s back-and-forth began with a phone call late Friday night. Trump called Newsom at 10:23 p.m. California time, as newscasts and social-media feeds had begun to fill with images of masked rioters throwing chunks of concrete and waving Mexican flags. In a 16-minute conversation, Trump urged Newsom to mobilize the police, according to a White House official. “I told him to, essentially, get his ass in gear and stop the riots,” the president told Fox News on Tuesday.

Newsom called that a “stone-cold lie.” He characterized the call as a cordial chat that gave little hint of what was coming. The governor said that he tried to steer the conversation to what was happening in L.A. but that Trump never brought up the National Guard. The two men have exchanged insults on social media but haven’t spoken since.

Newsom remained at his home in Northern California on Saturday, then traveled to L.A. on Sunday afternoon as the protests continued to escalate. After Trump mobilized the National Guard over his objections, Newsom announced that California would sue the administration.

Newsom, who has an acute sensitivity to political appearances, has yet to appear in public since arriving on the scene, communicating with the public through media interviews and social-media posts. Behind the scenes, he has directed the California Highway Patrol and met with local officials and with a local immigrant-rights group. 

Critics say Newsom’s response epitomizes Democrats’ failure to address the crime and disorder that have plagued the communities they govern. “There’s a silent majority out there that is pissed at Newsom for playing to the mob and not law-abiding citizens,” said Sean Walsh, a former aide to GOP Govs. Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Trump might be overreaching, but politicians like Newsom play into his hands when they insist that everything is fine when there is clear evidence to the contrary, he said.

A YouGov poll released Monday found that a 45% plurality of Americans disapprove of the Los Angeles protests, versus 36% who approve. By a similar margin, 45% to 39%, Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of deportations. A plurality also disapprove of Trump’s sending the National Guard and Marines to intervene.

The Trump administration has taken aim at California’s sanctuary law, which prohibits local and state police from conducting immigration enforcement and limits their cooperation with federal officials but doesn’t prohibit Immigration and Customs Enforcement from conducting operations. Newsom denied that the state was protecting criminals. “I have coordinated and collaborated with ICE for six years,” he said. “I have transferred over 10,500 individuals into ICE custody, over the objections of my legislature.” But, he added, “When people are lawfully playing by the rules and coming for court hearings and you’re deporting them, that crosses a line.”

Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, a Democrat, said Newsom has met the moment when his constituents need him. “It’s clear he wants to run for higher office, and he’s certainly made the case for why he’s deserving of that,” she said. “When our people are literally under attack by the federal government, we have to stand up and protect our people, and I’m glad that he is doing that.”

Newsom’s current posture toward Trump is a far cry from in January, when the president visited the state in the wake of the devastating wildfires. The two men hugged on the tarmac after Trump disembarked from Air Force One, and Newsom, seeking federal assistance and hoping to position himself as the adult in the room, largely ignored Trump’s insults. In February, the two met for more than an hour in the Oval Office, and Newsom publicly thanked Trump afterward.

But Newsom says Trump has become more vindictive and harder to deal with as his second term has progressed. The disaster aid he sought after the fires hasn’t materialized, and the administration has discussed withholding other federal funding from the state.

Even as he continued to spar with the president, Newsom insisted Monday he wasn’t focused on politics. “I have a responsibility to combine passion with action, to stand tall and firm and defend the values that I hold dear, that I think the vast majority of Americans hold dear, and assert myself in this moral moment,” he said. “I want people to know in my state that they matter, we care, we’re going to have their backs, we’re going to push back against the authoritarian tendencies. And we will be here for the long haul.”

Write to Molly Ball at molly.ball@wsj.com