Donald Trump’s favorite trench-coated immigration enforcer was forced to sit through Gavin Newsom comparing his look to Nazi “SS garb” bought on eBay—and then defend his wardrobe on live TV.
Appearing on NewsNation, Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino was shown a clip from the World Economic Forum in Davos in which the California governor used him as Exhibit A for America’s sinister “masked men” era under Trump.
Newsom sneered that Bovino was “dressed up as if he literally went on eBay and purchased SS garb… secret police, private army, masked men, people disappearing… no due process.”
Afterwards, NewsNation host Leland Vittert defended Bovino’s sartorial choices, reassuring Bovino that the coat “looked like it wasn’t something you could find on eBay,” before inviting Bovino to comment.
Bovino, visibly irritated, insisted there was nothing fascist about the calf-length green trench that has already sparked a tidal wave of “Nazi” memes online.
“That coat is definitely Border Patrol-issue,” he said. “I’ve had it over 25 years. I bought that at a young age in approximately 1999.”
Bovino is 55, which means he would have around 30 when he says he bought the coat.
Bovino went on to boast that he’d worn the exact same coat to then-CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus’ “coronation” at agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., “five, six years ago” and “received nothing but compliments” for it during the Biden, administration.
“Fast-forward a few years to this administration, all of a sudden it’s a problem. Hey, what changed there? Why is it a problem now, but it wasn’t [during] the last administration?”
Vittert, doing some journalism, asked Bovino if he could dig the photographic receipts out of his archive. “Do me a favor… Can you get us a picture of you in that coat at that ceremony?” he asked, promising to put it on air.
Bovino replied with a smirk, suggesting he knew he would be asked that question, “I believe I can do that. We’re working on that now.”
The awkward TV appearance is the latest for Bovino, who has become the most notorious face of Trump’s second-term immigration crackdown, but who has struggled to shake the Nazi cosplay accusations that Newsom has now brought to international attention.
Back in October, a Department of Homeland Security promo video featuring Bovino rallying his goons, interspersed with black-and-white images of him in the now-infamous trench coat triggered instant SS comparisons.
The clip, set to a pounding gabber remix of Coldplay’s Viva la Vida and emblazoned with the slogan “WE WILL NOT BE STOPPED,” was posted the same day a federal judge ordered Bovino to appear in court every weekday over Border Patrol’s heavy-handed tactics in Chicago.
Online, users shared side-by-side shots of Nazi officers and the commander, branded him “Munchkin Himmler,” and joked: “If not Nazi, why shaped like Nazi?” California’s governor joined in then, too, reposting the video and warning that it showed the Trump administration “isn’t even trying to hide who they are.”
Newsom has now taken the critique global. At the World Economic Forum this week, he ticked through what he called Trump’s “authoritarian tendencies”—from federalizing thousands of National Guard troops to deploying “masked men” to American cities—before landing on Bovino as his punchline, saying that Trump had effectively turned the Border Patrol boss into the face of a “secret police, private army.”
For Bovino, criticism about his look adds to a grim record on the ground since the summer. A November watchdog analysis found that under his leadership, the El Centro Sector had posted the highest use-of-force rate in the entire Border Patrol—more than double the national average—with incidents ranging from shooting at a moving minivan to rough physical takedowns.
That same month, a federal judge in Chicago branded Bovino evasive and effectively called him a liar after video evidence shredded his sworn account of a tear-gas incident during “Operation Midway Blitz” in Illinois.
And earlier this month, he sparked outrage by going on Fox News to praise ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who fatally shot unarmed protester Renee Nicole Good in the head in Minneapolis through the window of her car, declaring, “Hats off to that ICE agent. I’m glad he made it out alive.”
