California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, widely believed to be vying to run for his party’s presidential nomination in 2028, made more inflammatory and false statements Tuesday evening on a late-night show about Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, hours before another armed attack on an ICE facility.
In a sit-down with host Stephen Colbert, whose show has been canceled and will be off the air in a few months, Newsom falsely claimed that ICE agents were randomly kidnapping and “disappearing” people in his state and around the country, rather than simply doing their jobs and apprehending migrants who are in the country illegally and have a criminal history.
“That’s happening in the United States of America. Masked men jumping out of unmarked cars. People disappearing. No due process. No oversight. Zero accountability,” Newsom claimed. “People ask, ‘Is it authoritarianism? You’re being hyperbolic.’ Bullshit we’re being hyperbolic.”
Newsom then reverted to the race card, suggesting that the Trump administration was only targeting “black and brown communities.”
“And so I — I’m deeply proud that I had the privilege of signing the nation’s first bill to address the issue of masking, also to require you have simple identification, to your point. I mean if some guy jumped out of an unmarked car and a van with a mask on tried to grab me — I mean by definition you’re going to push back. And so this — these — these are not just authoritarian tendencies, these are authoritarian actions by an authoritarian government,” he said.