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Gavin Newsom wants to be president. I am not sure any member of the Democratic Party is more transparently angling for the job than Gavin Newsom. And that’s fine—the norm of a clearly ambitious politician claiming that he (and it’s usually he) has no designs on the White House is as tiresome as it is obviously dishonest. Newsom, though, seems to be burnishing his presidential credentials by palling around with some of the most noxious figures on the Trumpian right, seemingly deciding that if MAGA is having a moment, he’ll meet it. His new podcast, This Is Gavin Newsom, feels a bit like the audio equivalent of Kim Kardashian sexy-posing with a Tesla Cybertruck as Elon Musk dismantles the federal government and flings millions of Americans into insecurity and potential immiseration: soulless, self-interested, and shallow.
Newsom has chatted with reactionary conspiracy theorist Charlie Kirk, as well as MAGA architect Steve Bannon. Kirk runs Turning Point USA, a youth-focused group with conservative mega-money backing, and has used his platform to deny the 2020 election results, spread COVID disinformation, attack efforts to promote racial equality (even criticizing American fealty to the Civil Rights Acts), assert that “MLK was awful” and “not a good person,” and argue that “birth control, like, really screws up female brains.” Using contraception, he said at a Turning Point event, “is awful, it’s terrible, and it creates very angry and bitter young ladies and young women.” This, he says, creates an advantage for Democrats: “Then that bitterness then manifests into a political party that is the bitter party. I mean, the Democrat Party is all about ‘bring us your bitterness and, you know, we’ll give you free stuff.’ ”
Bannon, who ran Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, is one of the world’s leading purveyors of politically motived lies and propaganda. He was indicted in 2022 on charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering, but the trial was delayed into 2025, and Trump pardoned him. Since then, he has been convicted on multiple contempt charges, and spent four months in prison. He ran the racist and antisemitic Breitbart News, which was nothing but a pox on the American public. The dismantling of the administrative state? That was Steve Bannon’s agenda. Trump’s current strategy to “flood the zone with shit” to overwhelm the media and ram a dangerous agenda through? That’s a Bannon-ism. He recently threw up a Nazi salute at the Conservative Political Action Conference. (He claims it was “just a wave,” but see for yourself.)
Kirk and Bannon are influential men, and both understand this new administration; they are worthy interview subjects for any journalist, or anyone seeking to understand Trump and what his second term may bring. They’re also men who represent a now-triumphant wing of the Republican Party, and if Newsom were hosting a political debate show, they would be worthy opponents.
Newsom, though, isn’t chatting with these men to push back on them or engage in good-faith debate or even learn much at all; instead, he’s almost admiring, as if he’s trying to sell himself to their audiences. He is positioning himself as a man for everyone, including the men of MAGA.
It’s of course not a bad idea for Democrats to try to appeal to a wider audience. The problem, though, is that Newsom seems willing to compromise whatever ideals he had in order to win over people who seem wildly unlikely to ever vote for a Democrat. He doesn’t seem to be engaged in conversations intended to persuade movable voters so much as he is pandering to people already on the extremes. This, predictably, aggravates the Democratic base. It also reveals him as a man without much in the way of a moral core.
If you’ve followed Newsom’s rise, this isn’t all that surprising. This is a man who was once married to Kimberly Guilfoyle, the Fox News host who was engaged to Donald Trump Jr. before being shipped off to Greece so he could move on with his latest girlfriend. Newsom is the man who, at 39, dated a 19-year-old model. He’s the man who had an affair with the wife of his dear friend and campaign manager. (To Newsom’s credit, his current wife seems truly impressive and I wish she would run for office.) He’s the man who imposed strict COVID protocols for Californians, then went to a party at French Laundry. None of us have perfect personal lives—but Newsom’s certainly seems more scandal-plagued than most, and more driven by spectacular narcissism.
As Joe Biden flailed in the lead-up to the 2024 election, one very funny person on Twitter wrote, “Gavin Newsom is probably the only person having any fun right now you just know he’s gnawing at the bars of whatever dog cage a 20 year old dominatrix has him padlocked in.” The joke worked because, well, Newsom seems like the exact kind of slightly-too-slick politician who has more than a few secrets. When I mentioned to a group of women that I was writing this column, more than one brought up Patrick Bateman.
Don’t get me wrong: I generally like Newsom’s politics. In California, one of the country’s most liberal states, he’s a liberal leader; as mayor of San Francisco, he had the city issuing same-sex marriage licenses well before such unions were legal nationwide. But those politics seem awfully dependent on the direction of the political winds. As the nation has taken a hard right turn, he sounds less like a moral beacon and more like a collaborator.
If there is one good thing about the second Trump term, it’s that it is separating the brave from the cowardly and the principled from the solipsistic. A small but respectable number of conservatives object to Trump’s assaults on free speech and expression, his xenophobia, his trampling over the rights Americans hold dear. And a troublingly large number of business leaders, politicians, and public figures have seemingly decided that it behooves them to bend the knee to a man who would be king. There has been a vibe shift, and a political shift, and too many self-styled leaders have opted to follow it rather than lead the country in a better direction. Americans need a leader who is more interested in service than in power, someone who will stand firm against autocracy, not shapeshift into what they believe others want.
This is not Gavin Newsom.
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