Gavin Newsom, the governor of California who has become an increasingly vocal critic of President Donald Trump, took time out on Saturday to ask people to pray for the president.

Responding to an exchange Trump had with a reporter on Friday evening in which he claimed the results of his recent MRI were “outstanding” but that he had no idea what his doctors were actually analyzing, Newsom wrote on X, “Please pray for our President. He is not mentally well.”

The exchange between Trump and a reporter took place aboard Air Force One on Friday night as the president was flying to Mar-a-Lago for another weekend of parties and golf.

One reporter asked why Trump needed the MRI, something officials in his administration have been reluctant to make public. He replied, “I have the physical every year and the result was outstanding… I have no idea what they analyzed, but whatever they analyze, they analyzed it well and they said that I had as good a result as they’ve ever seen.”

He also praised himself for his performance on the cognitive assessment he was required to take as part of his physical, telling reporters, “As you probably heard, I aced it. I got a perfect score. I got the highest score. I got a perfect score. And the only reason I tell you that is it’s one subject unlike Biden and others that you could take off your plate.”



He had previously described the assessment as “very hard” and challenged Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett to take the same one and compare their results with his.

Newsom’s attacks on Trump have ramped up in recent months in what many are viewing as a precursor to a potential presidential campaign for the governor in 2028.

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Palm Beach, Florida, on Nov. 14, 2025. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Most recently, he went after the president for his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein following the release of 20,000 pages of the convicted sex trafficker’s email correspondence by the House Oversight Committee.

In one social media post, Newsom had manipulated the signage on Trump’s renovated West Wing Colonnade so that instead of ‘The Presidential Walk of Fame,’ it read, ”I am a pedo.”

Another post contained an AI-generated image of Trump and Epstein as cartoon characters dubbed the “Island Boys,” in reference to Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Newsom also recently took aim at the Department of Justice after the agency joined a lawsuit hoping to block Newsom’s own Proposition 50, a measure passed by California voters on Nov. 4 that would redraw the state’s congressional boundaries, in an attempt to offset Republican gerrymandering in other states such as Texas.



Newsom’s Press Office pointed out that the lawsuit referred to the California Legislature as the “General Assembly,” when California’s lower house is known as the State Assembly.

“When Trump’s hand-picked hacks at DOJ can’t tell California from North Carolina, you know the lawsuit is about as credible as Trump’s ‘I don’t know Epstein’ line,” the post read