During the back and forth, Newsom grew his TikTok following by almost 50%, to 897,000 as of yesterday, and gained 60,000 new followers on X.
While Newsom didn’t ask for the military response in LA that ignited tension with the President over the weekend, he responded to the sudden attention with internet-savvy posts.
They borrow strategies from professional creators, such as speaking straight to camera, shooting vertically, and using trending sounds on TikTok to reach more viewers.
Audiences responded with Newsom-related memes of their own, introducing his political persona to throngs of young people online.
In a political economy that’s increasingly beholden to the incentives and payoffs of social media, political experts say Newsom’s online strategy could rally support for his position on the LA protests and bolster his profile among younger, more online voters.
“This sort of meme-posting with clever comments back and forth probably isn’t helpful with swing voters, but it could be effective at making him more popular among Democrats,” said Jon Ladd, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University.
Before police clashed with protesters during anti-Ice demonstrations on Sunday, Newsom was already taking aim at Trump on social media over the President’s alleged plans to cancel federal funding to California.
But the tone between Newsom and Trump grew more aggressive as the President deployed 2000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles.
Newsom took to his official gubernatorial TikTok account on Monday to announce he would sue the Trump Administration over the deployment, which he called illegal and chaotic.
The post, which has been viewed more than 8 million times, was set to the hip-hop song Sticky by Tyler The Creator and included a meme with the words “f*** around” and “find out”.
Comments on the post expressed shock and delight that the Governor, known as a moderate Democrat, would share something so tongue-in-cheek and antagonistic.
After Trump’s border tsar Tom Homan said in an interview with NBC that he wouldn’t rule out arresting elected officials including Newsom if they “harbour illegal aliens” or defy law enforcement, Newsom again shot back on TikTok.
“Come and get me, tough guy. I don’t give a damn,” his personal account shared alongside a clip of the Governor speaking about Homan’s comments.
Trump and his allies attacked Newsom on Truth Social and other platforms.
“The very incompetent ‘Gov.,’ Gavin Newscum, and ‘Mayor,’ Karen Bass, should be saying, ‘THANK YOU, President Trump, YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL. WE WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT YOU, SIR,’ Trump wrote on Tuesday in a Truth post that got 52,000 likes.
Right-wing media networks boosted the clash, with Valuetainment Media owner Patrick Bet-David using his popular YouTube channel to criticise Newsom - and promote his company’s branded flip flop sandals, “for Newsom, who’s flip-flopping”.
Newsom, who will run for re-election in November, could benefit from the attention generated by a public feud with Trump even if it puts him and his constituents in the Administration’s crosshairs, said Karen North, a professor of digital social media at the University of Southern California.
Newsom’s approval ratings are already surging among potential voters in California from 44% in October to 52% in March, according to data from the Public Policy Institute of California.
Feuds are known to funnel attention towards online influencers, from YouTube gossipmongers to internet-era celebrities such as the Kardashians.
The same holds true for politicians, said North, who increasingly style themselves after popular online creators in the hope of building a brand that resonates with voters.
“Newsom’s approach to this extremely contentious situation creates an opportunity for him to lock horns with Donald Trump, but he’s not doing it in the standard manner of having a hard, flat negotiation, rather in a way that plays to the shareability of social media,” she said.
Thanks to algorithmic feeds that prize outrageous material and must-share content, memes travel faster than messaging, North said.
To win elections or even solve serious political conflicts such as the Los Angeles showdown, politicians such as Newsom now drum up support by feeding into trending narratives online, she added.
They also rely more on new media channels such as podcasts and video talk shows that share clips on social media - which Trump’s digital strategists leveraged successfully in the 2024 election.
Beyond the news media, there’s a second ecosystem of online takes and commentary that’s often more powerful than traditional channels for communicating with constituents, North said, and political figures are eager to break in.
Representatives for Newsom didn’t respond to a request for comment on his recent posting.
Even the most fervent online meme-ing doesn’t always translate to political success.
In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, spectators were awed by the popularity of Kamala Harris memes on TikTok, which is known for its younger audience.
At the polls, however, the coconut memes and “Brat summer” edits didn’t tip the scales in her favour.
