Newsom's press office draws mockery after posts appear to contrast Biden's brain with Obama's

Gavin Newsom's press office posted two photos on X Thursday that were almost certainly meant to score points against the current administration. Instead, they detonated in a different direction entirely.

The first image featured Joe Biden with the caption: "RT if you miss having a President with empathy." The second featured Barack Obama with a rather different appeal: "RT if you miss having a President with a functioning brain."

The internet did what the internet does. It read the juxtaposition exactly as written.

The Quiet Part, Out Loud

One X user put it simply:

"The implication here is so funny I can't even think of a joke."

Another was more direct: "They knew what they were doing." The message, whether intentional or not, landed like a confession. Biden gets credit for empathy. Obama gets the functioning brain. The 83-year-old former president, who was often seen tripping up the steps of Air Force One and suffering multiple senior moments on stage, was apparently not the candidate for the second compliment, as Daily Mail reports.

It is, according to the source article, unclear whether Newsom meant the implication. His office, when confronted with the posts, responded with all the self-awareness of a press shop that hasn't read its own feed:

"Yes. Thank you for reposting some of our best tweets?"

Not a correction. Not a clarification. A victory lap.

What Everyone Already Knew

The reason the posts hit so hard is that they confirmed what the political class spent years pretending wasn't happening. Biden repeatedly lost his train of thought during a June 2024 debate with Donald Trump, a performance so disastrous it ultimately ended his reelection campaign. Rumors about cognitive decline had circulated for years before that, and they only intensified afterward. An October 2025 Congressional report found that Biden's doctor refused to run a cognitive test on him. Some aides reportedly had to raise their voices in meetings, citing his declining hearing.

None of this was a secret to anyone paying attention. It was only a secret in the sense that Democratic officials and allied media outlets treated it as one, waving away legitimate concerns as right-wing attacks until the debate made denial physically impossible.

Biden was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer in May 2025 and continues to receive treatment. That diagnosis, coupled with the cognitive concerns that preceded it, paints a picture of a man who should have been enjoying retirement, not running the free world. The people around him who enabled his candidacy and shielded him from scrutiny owe the public more than snarky tweets about empathy.

Newsom's Brand of Opposition

The governor's X account has been busy. In addition to the Biden and Obama posts, Newsom posted about Kamala Harris with the caption: "RT if you miss having a Vice President who was respected around the world." He also recently called former President George W. Bush the "smartest Republican President of the new millennium," a line meant as an insult to the current occupant of the Oval Office but one that mostly reminded everyone that Newsom's idea of clever is a backhanded compliment aimed at a man who left office nearly two decades ago.

This is the Newsom playbook: constant, performative opposition designed to keep his name in national circulation. Every post is a positioning exercise. Every caption is a focus-grouped jab. The problem is that when your content team accidentally admits your own party's former president lacked a functioning brain, the brand takes a hit.

One reply to the posts included a photo of Newsom himself with the caption: "If you want someone that has neither and supports fraud." Not exactly the engagement his team was hoping for.

The Real Story Democrats Keep Missing

The deeper problem for Democrats isn't a rogue social media post. It's the pattern the post exposed. For years, the party's strategy on Biden's fitness was:

• Deny there was a problem
• Attack anyone who raised the question
• Quietly acknowledge the problem only after it became politically untenable
• Move on without accountability

Newsom's press office stumbled into the last phase. They've moved so far past the Biden era that they can casually assign "functioning brain" to Obama and "empathy" to Biden without recognizing what that division concedes. The cognitive decline isn't an accusation anymore. It's the organizing principle of their own nostalgia posts.

That's what happens when a party spends years gaslighting the public. Eventually the truth becomes so ambient, so baked into the background, that even your own communications team treats it as a given.

They didn't let a secret slip. They just forgot it was supposed to still be one.