Vice President JD Vance laid blame on California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats for their anti-Donald Trump immigration rhetoric after two detainees were killed and one more injured in a shooting Wednesday at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas.
“When Democrats like Gavin Newsom say these people are part of an authoritarian government, when the left-wing media lies about what they’re doing, when they lie about who they’re arresting, when they lie about the actual job of law enforcement, what they’re doing is encouraging crazy people to go and commit violence,” Vance said at an event in North Carolina, claiming the gunman was “politically motivated to go after law enforcement.”
The shooting is being investigated by federal officials as an act of targeted violence and comes just two weeks after conservative activist and close Trump ally Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at a college campus in Utah in an apparent act of political violence. FBI Director Kash Patel posted a photo on X of several rounds of ammunition from the shooting, including one that had the words “anti-ICE” written on it. The FBI’s special agent in charge in Dallas, Joe Rothrock, said at a press conference that the rounds near the suspected gunman had anti-ICE messaging.
Vance said that while people don’t need to agree with the administration’s immigration policies, “If your political rhetoric encourages violence against our law enforcement, you can go straight to hell and you have no place in the political conversation of the United States of America.”
Newsom snapped back in a post on X, saying, “No thanks, JD. I will not be going ‘straight to hell’ today. Though when I watch you speak I certainly feel like I’m already there.”
Newsom’s press office quickly followed suit, also responding in a post on X, “According to JD Vance, JD Vance is going to hell because JD Vance compared Trump to Hitler!” The post was an apparent nod at past critiques made by Vance about Trump, including one comment where the vice president compared Trump to “America’s Hitler.”
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Newsom emphasized the governor’s consistent condemnation of violence against law enforcement while slamming Trump for pardoning “cop-beaters.”
“JD Vance and other smug, self-righteous Trump lackeys would like nothing better than for their critics to stay silent about when law enforcement under their direction violates people’s rights and undermines public safety, while they condemn those same critics ‘straight to hell,’” spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo said in the statement.
Newsom, a vocal Trump critic, has repeatedly pushed back on the president’s deportation agenda, blasting many of Trump’s moves, including the president’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles earlier this year. In an interview last month, he accused federal immigration officials of acting as “the largest private police force in history.” Less than a week ago, he signed several bills aimed at protecting California’s large immigrant population from Trump’s mass deportation plan.
