California Gov. Gavin Newsom has a new podcast called “This Is Gavin Newsom.” Many Democrats are not going to be happy about it, because thus far all it shows is that Newsom is not who we thought he was.
As Newsom put it, the show’s premise is talking to “people I disagree with, people I look up to.” Over the first few episodes, the governor’s chat partners have only been far-right activists and commentators, so one would expect them to fall in the first category. Yet Newsom is so deferential to his guests — even when they spread noxious right-wing propaganda — that sometimes they seem to fit more clearly in the latter category.
It's not clear if Newsom has a clear command of his new project.
Newsom is widely considered a serious contender for the 2028 Democratic nomination, and his decision to start a podcast and invite big-name right-wingers — like former Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk — seems like an obvious attention grab. But it’s not clear if Newsom has a clear command of his new project, or whether the attention he seeks could backfire on him.
The first episode featured Newsom telling Kirk that his son is a fan of the MAGA activist. Newsom also agreed with or praised Kirk scores of times — so much, in fact, that Kirk later said “Gov. Newsom was being overly effusive in his praise of me.” Listening to the Democrat — who as mayor of San Francisco two decades ago was at the vanguard of the gay rights movement — gush with warmth and admiration for a far-right commentator who has promoted the racist “great replacement theory,” called for completely banning gender-affirming care for trans people and described trans people as “disgusting, mentally ill, neurotic, predatory freaks” was jarring and disheartening.
In the headline-generating moment of the interview, Newsom said it was “deeply unfair” to allow transgender women and girls to compete in female sports. He also objected to “woke culture,” saying nobody in his office ever used the term “Latinx” — even though he has used the term himself in the past multiple times. The conversation seemed to signal that Newsom is moving to the right of the Democratic Party establishment on a number of culture war issues.
Newsom’s newly revealed positions represent the strain of thinking in some Democratic circles that the party should retreat from less popular policy positions and linguistic norms tied to progressive inclusivity in order to appeal to a wider base. Recent polls from YouGov and The New York Times/Ipsos have found that a sizable majority of Americans believe trans women should not be able to participate in women’s sports. And some data shows that the term Latinx, which is an attempt to make the term “Latino” more gender neutral, can drive Latino voters away from Democrats.
It is theoretically possible that shifting on the issue of trans women in sports could make Democrats more appealing to the general electorate. But there’s also reason to be skeptical. Vice President Kamala Harris kept trans issues at a distance during her 2024 White House bid, but she was still defined by the right over her earlier positions. And survey data and studies consistently showed trans issues were never a top-tier issue for voters in the election and had little to no effect on voter choice.
In other words, it’s possible that Newsom — who until this podcast had been considered an exceptional LGBTQ ally — is signaling a distance from the trans community that would never endear him to people on the right. The pivot is likely to come off as insincere to many, in part because the binary between Democrats and Republicans on trans rights is so stark that Democratic moderation will go unrewarded.
The other issue for Newsom is that if he were ever to run for president, he’d have to get through the primary electorate first. And it’s clear that Newsom has immediately sparked a backlash online from many progressives who think his pivot is expedient and marks an abandonment of the trans community. Every presidential hopeful has to watch both their right and their left flank — and navigate those challenges without being branded a total phony.
Newsom’s conversation with Bannon was also packed with deference and praise for one of the most influential architects of the Trump era. Newsom allowed Bannon to casually lie about the 2020 election without pushback, and to define right-wing populism as “anti-elitist” without any substantive objection about Trump’s billionaire-friendly presidency. Newsom also chuckled as Bannon implied that the legal cases against Trump were purely political. Given the tone of the rest of the conversation, the laugh came off as sympathetic rather than a recognition of absurdity.
It wasn’t a debate or a dialogue; on everything from DOGE to tariffs, Bannon ran the table and Newsom mostly nodded along. To be sure, on occasion Newsom pushed back on issues like trade, but those were the exceptions proving the rule, and the overall effect was to normalize the rest of Bannon’s noxious misinformation and right-wing theories of society — which went unchallenged.
It’s hard to tell if Newsom knows what he’s doing or how he’s coming across. Politicians like former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., know how to talk in a persuasive and respectful tone to conservative audiences while maintaining their adherence to liberal and social democratic values, respectively.
Newsom, by contrast, comes off in these podcast episodes like a dupe and a pushover to progressives, and it’s doubtful that his acquiescent posture will translate to votes from across the aisle. Even on the level of pure political education, Newsom’s project is irresponsible. He’s effectively sane-washing lots of right-wing talking points that demand more serious engagement than he’s demonstrated he’s capable of providing, and he is not advancing arguments about how folks on the right should see it in their interest to reconsider the left.
It begs the question: Who is “This Is Gavin Newsom” for?
