'Presidential suite with gold leaf': Newsom accuses Trump of institutionalizing corruption

California Governor Gavin Newsom tore into President Donald Trump's second term, accusing him of making corruption his guiding principle. "All of this happening, this open sewage system. You talk about draining the swamp. He gave it a presidential suite with gold leaf. You're seeing this gross corruption at a scale and scope never (seen before) in modern American history," he told MeidasTouch's Jack Cocchiarella.

The 58-year-old pointed to the ordeal of figures like himself and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who, he said, has had to spend millions fending off Trump's frivolous lawsuits. "People are being targeted on his list. Their families are being torn asunder. This is stuff I don't even imagine exists at this scale. A year and a half in, even in Putin's Russia or Kim Jong Un's North Korea. I mean it, at this scale, this quickly in the second term," he continued.

Newsom then went on to list Trump's alleged offences in a freewheeling interview where he also touched upon his own case by the Justice Department and Zohran Mamdani's ascendancy. "...not a $400 million Qatari plane. Remember, there was almost $950 million in the Pentagon budget to retrofit that plane. That will be his personal plane that he was gifted by the Qatari government. That's just a symbolic example of the corruption."

"I'm talking about what's happening substantively with these kids and these investments and the Pentagon contracts they're receiving on rare earth minerals and drone companies and all the stuff that's happening with Kushner family, the Witkow family, the Board of Peace, which is about getting the piece of the Middle East, which talk about the UAE and high-value chips where they're getting a piece of our national security, where the Biden administration held off," he asserted.

Newsom, who has been the Governor since 2019, did not stop at that. "But as long as you can get a deal done with the UAE on the private family businesses, then all of a sudden national security becomes less of an important talking point. Or how about the tariff relief in places like Vietnam for the golf courses and the development deals and the dozen other countries that he's doing business in? How about all the corruption as it relates to just the day trading, literally, behind the Oval Office desk," he averred.

The remarks come in the wake of a mammoth 900-page financial disclosure detailing the extent of Trump's earnings—in the billions—from a variety of ventures, including crypto. Newsom himself is facing a Department of Justice investigation into him, his wife, family, friends, and former employees over corruption allegations. Newsom has denied the charges and argued that Trump is targeting him over his plans for a 2028 presidential run.