President Donald Trump might be known for subtly flirting with dictatorship, but California Gov. Gavin Newsom just said the quiet part out loud.
In his latest jab at Trump, the Democratic lawmaker compared the president to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un—the very same authoritarian ruler Trump, just hours earlier, had boasted about having a “great relationship” with.
The comment came after the Department of Labor promoted a photo on X showing a massive banner draped over the Frances Perkins Building, the department’s D.C. headquarters, of a scowling Trump next to the words “AMERICAN WORKERS FIRST,” hung beside a similar image of Theodore Roosevelt.
Newsom responded in his now-characteristic parody of Trump’s social media voice: “THANK YOU, GLORIOUS LEADER!”
The caption appeared above a photo of a large mural of former North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il that is installed in Pyongyang.
Trump touted his relationship with North Korea’s current supreme leader, Kim Jong Un, earlier on Monday, telling an audience in the Oval Office he “looks forward to seeing him.”
“I know him better than anybody almost,” Trump said, pausing before adding: “Other than his sister—his sister knows him pretty well.”
Trump brought the dictator up again later during an Oval Office meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung. After Lee noted that North Korea had “developed further its nuclear and missile capabilities” during the four years Trump was out of office, the president said he’d like to meet with the North Korean dictator again.
Lee said he hoped Trump would “usher in a new era of peace on the Korean Peninsula,” to which Trump replied:“I will do that, and we’ll have talks. He’d like to meet with me.”
“I have a great relationship with Kim Jong Un. I understand him,” Trump said. “I spent a lot of free time with him talking about things that we probably aren’t supposed to talk about.”
A spokesperson for the White House responded to the Daily Beast’s request for comment with a screenshot of a Daily Mail article claiming the governor is secretly paying for his own monument at San Francisco City Hall to commemorate his time as mayor.
This isn’t the first time Newsom has drawn comparisons between Trump and authoritarian rulers. After the president sent 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June to subdue largely nonviolent anti-ICE protests, the governor accused him of provoking violence, writing on X: “These are the acts of a dictator, not a President.”
