California Governor Gavin Newsom appeared to question whether Donald Trump suffers from dementia after the 79-year-old president issued a series of widely-debunked claims in his cabinet meeting.
About half an hour into his cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump turned his attention to the Democratic lawmaker, who has emerged as one of the president’s most vocal critics and a thorn in his administration’s side.
“We sent hundreds of millions of gallons of water per day into the Pacific Ocean,” the president said, resurfacing claims that he sent wildfire-ravaged Los Angeles critical water supplies in January, which he says California’s leaders refused to provide.
“They turn a valve. The valve heads out. We turned the valve back. I actually had to do it using force.” Trump continued in his staccato-style address.
In comments directed at Gavin “Newscum,” Trump urged the governor to “turn the rest of the water on.”
Newsom reposted a clip of Trump’s attack on X before landing a jab of his own – a screenshot of an interaction with Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok, thrusting Trump’s mental acuity into question.
“Do people with dementia repeat false things over and over again?” the message to Grok read.
“Yes, people with dementia can repeat false statements or beliefs, a behavior often linked to memory impairments and cognitive changes,” the chatbot replied.
“This can manifest as confabulation, where they create or repeat false memories to fill gaps in recollection, or perseveration, where they fixate on a particular idea or statement.”
After Newsom’s social media post, the White House fired back in a statement to the Daily Beast.
“Newscum will say anything to distract from his terrible handling of the California wildfires that President Trump had to come in and clean up,” a spokesperson said.
As the brush fires scorched tens of thousands of acres in January, fire chiefs confirmed they were faced with a new challenge: depleted water supplies and low water pressure.
A torrent of misinformation spread online and, as it turned out, the president was one of the key individuals stoking the flames.
Trump accused Newsom of refusing “to sign the water restoration declaration,” which would have allowed which the president said “would have allowed millions of gallons of water” to flow into California.
Newsom’s office shot back that “there is no such document as the water restoration declaration – that is pure fiction.”
Contrary to Trump’s claims, no water supply from the Pacific Northwest connects to California’s systems.
While the president did order the Army Corps of Engineers to release billions of gallons of water from dams at Lake Kaweah and Lake Success, it rushed into a dry lakebed in California’s Central Valley.
Experts told CBS News that not only was the water unable to flow to Southern California, but it would most likely go to waste.
