Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon ripped California Gov. Gavin Newsom in an interview on “Pod Force One,” saying his “state leadership failures” were disqualifying for a 2028 presidential run — before suggesting that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was a far “more promising” candidate for Democrats.
Dhillon, a former California resident, told The Post’s Miranda Devine that Newsom, who is term-limited and will leave office in January 2027, “isn’t untested, like [former President Barack] Obama was, in a way” but has “notable personal foibles and failures” when asked whether the governor had a shot at the US presidency.
The assistant AG for the Civil Rights Division also noted that a member of Newsom’s staff had claimed she was “involved in the firebombing of a judge’s house in South Carolina, which turned out to have been an accident.”
“I think that there are other more promising, for the Democrat Party, younger politicians,” Dhillon said in Wednesday’s podcast episode. “I think AOC is one of those fictionally created-in-a-lab characters that may be a more promising one for them.”
“I think that’s the bigger threat. The Zohran Mamdanis of the world, who are charismatic, attractive, diabolical, that’s the next generation,” she added.
Newsom, 58, flew to Washington, DC, last week to request an additional $34 billion in wildfire recovery aid from Congress — but officials at the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency refused to meet with the Democratic governor.
Tensions with the Trump administration have defined Newsom’s second-to-last year in office, with the president and governor taking shots at each other over the wildfire recovery aid, energy issues, anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles that led to National Guard troops deploying, as well as trolling posts on social media.
The souped up social media presence, which has echoed Trump’s brash and unapologetic tone, complete with the president’s signature all capital letters style, as well as the governor’s pivots to the middle on controversial issues, has caused many to speculate Newsom is gearing up for a 2028 Democratic run.
AOC is also rumored to be eyeing a run for the presidency in 2028 — or a run for the Senate seat held by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
Newsom is currently leading the primary field with 28% support, according to the RealClearPolitics polling aggregator, followed by former Vice President Kamala Harris at 20%, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at 11.5% and Ocasio-Cortez at 8.5%.
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Dhillon’s Civil Rights Division has sued Newsom’s administration several times, most recently for adopting a redistricting plan, known as Proposition 50, that allegedly “racially gerrymandered congressional districts in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”
The assistant AG recused herself from the case since her former law firm initiated the suit, but Dhillon said she had a poor impression of Newsom’s team based on the controversy over the firebombing of the South Carolina judge’s home.
Izzy Gardon, Newsom’s director of communications, said that “Ms. Dhillon owes us a full apology for her blatantly false implications. Our office never threatened her, in contrast to the Trump Administration’s vile rhetoric against sitting judges.”
“In recent weeks and months, Trump officials have referred to judges as ‘terrorists’ and ‘legal insurrectionists,’” the rep said, noting she has reposted other offensive tweets including one calling him a “woke douche bag.”
Gardon added: “She and her associates own that dangerous, disgraceful, and un-American rhetoric, and she should apologize for that, too.”
Circuit Court Judge Diane Goodstein’s home in Edisto Beach was engulfed in a fire on Oct. 5 that authorities have still not determined the cause of. Sources told FitsNews that month the judge, who ruled against the Trump administration’s request for state voter data but was overruled by the South Carolina Supreme Court.
In a post from her official account on X, Dhillon said her division “will not stand for a state court judge’s hasty nullification of our federal voting laws” and “will allow nothing to stand in the way of our mandate to maintain clear voter rolls.”
Gardon had posted on X in response to the judge’s home being lit on fire on Oct. 5: “A few weeks ago, one of Trump’s top DOJ officials publicly targeted this judge. Today, the judge’s home is on fire.”
Dhillon dished on her “Pod Force One” interview, “They blamed me and Stephen Miller for that, and you get death threats because of that? I had to literally call the police over some threats that I received.”
