California Governor Gavin Newsom trolled President Donald Trump after Trump made an odd comment to reporters about Newsom having “some strange hand action going on.”
Trump has lashed out at Newsom numerous times in the last couple of weeks, particularly over Newsom’s decision to sign a sweeping redistricting proposal to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries, creating five new Democratic-leaning U.S. House seats in what he described as a direct response to Republican-led gerrymandering in Texas backed by Trump.
He said the following during a Cabinet meeting:
“You have an incompetent governor in California. Gavin. I know him very well. He’s incompetent.”
“He’s a nice guy, looks good. ‘Hi everybody, how ya doin’?’ He’s got some strange hand action going on.”
“I don’t know what the hell his problem is. It’s a little weird, to be honest. There’s a little something shaky going on there.”
You can hear what Trump said in the video below.
Newsom later fired back with the following message:
“You really want to have a conversation about hands?”
You can see Newsom’s response below.
Newsom’s response was pretty clever.
Not only is it a nod to the president’s famous sensitivity about the size of his little hands, but it also touched on recent speculation about Trump’s health, particularly the condition of his hands. In multiple appearances, the president has displayed visible bruising or what appeared to be heavy makeup covering black-and-blue marks on his right hand.
Those marks have been noticeable since last summer, when then-campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt (who is now the White House Press Secretary) attributed them to Trump’s “constantly working and shaking hands all day, every day” on the campaign trail.
More recently, however, questions resurfaced after photos also showed Trump with noticeably swollen ankles. Pressed on both issues, Leavitt released a memo from Physician to the President Dr. Sean Barbabella, who described the marks as “minor bruising on the back of his hand” caused by “soft tissue irritation from frequent handshaking and the use of aspirin,” which is commonly taken as a preventive blood thinner.
People saw exactly what Newsom was putting down—and joined him in mocking Trump.
Unclear what “hand action” Trump was referring to when it comes to Newsom, but it begs the question whether that’s the best he’s got against the California Governor.
