Fox News host Dana Perino got heated over California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s all-caps posts mocking President Donald Trump’s chaotic Truth Social style.
Perino’s comments were the latest in a back-and-forth with the governor’s press team. On Monday night, they had criticized “Ding Dong” Perino for saying earlier on The Five that Newsom was “making a fool of himself” with his Trump-style tweets.
Perino is a co-host of The Five and also hosts America’s Newsroom.
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Newsom himself has said that he is imitating Trump’s style as a “wake-up call”: “If you’ve got issues with what I’m putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns about what he’s putting out as president.”
Yet on Fox Tuesday, Perino once again voiced the same type of complaint with Newsom’s posts.
Responding to Newsom reading aloud some of his posts to podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen, Perino said, “He was reading tweets that were written for him by people he is heavily investing in to try to help him look more like Trump, I guess.“
“I thought they hated Trump, but they are trying to be more like him and they have to pay people to do it,” the former George W. Bush press secretary said.
“What I was saying yesterday is that I believe everybody needs to find their own way,” she continued, adding that other potential 2028 presidential candidates aren’t doing what Newsom is doing.
“If you think about [Zohran] Mamdani, his authenticity is what rocketed him to the top,” she said of the Democrats’ candidate for New York City mayor.
“Now you have [Andrew] Cuomo trying to copy him and it’s just cringe. That was my point. If you’re doing this and it’s not authentic and you’re trying to do somebody else who you say is Hitler and you think that we don’t get the joke—we get the joke! It’s just not funny!”
But Newsom’s team isn’t convinced she does.
“If Dana got it, she wouldn’t have needed a second try on the number 1 news show—where she still fumbled, again,” Newsom’s office told the Daily Beast.
Fox News has yet to respond to a request for comment.
