When Gavin Newsom announced last month that he would be launching a podcast, This Is Gavin Newsom, ahead of a presumed presidential bid in 2028, in theory, it made a lot of sense as Americans continue to break from traditional forms of media.
However, as soon as people found out what sort of guests the governor of California had in mind for his show, there was immediate reason to question whether his approach was the dumbest way possible of helping him fulfill his obvious dream of becoming the real Fitzgerald “Fitz” Grant III.
Speaking with Politico, Newsom claimed: “We already know what our disagreements are with the MAGA movement. I want to understand what the motivations are, the legitimacy of those motivations, and just really understand where people are coming from. They are influential — they are. They explain more things in more ways on more days about what’s going on and if we’re not trying to understand their motivations, we will be victims of their motivations.”
Separately, Newsom told supporters via email, “I think we all agreed after the last election that it’s important for Democrats to explore new and unique ways of talking to people.”
This might all sound reasonable to some on its surface, but consider the guests that have been invited to This Is Gavin Newsom thus far.
People like Charlie Kirk, known for having takes like, “I’m sorry. If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’” Kirk once also referred to George Floyd as a “scumbag” and is presently advocating that his killer, Derek Chauvin, receive a pardon from President Donald Trump. In addition to his casual racism, Kirk is just as vile towards the LGBTQ community and women more broadly – once declaring that birth control makes women “angry and bitter.”
Then there’s Michael Savage, who I can recall being criticized in years past for promoting white nationalist conspiracy theories, using phrases like “sodomite” while telling past callers of his show to “get AIDS and die,” and espousing antisemitic rhetoric.
More recently, Newsom hosted the Nazi-saluting former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who vilifies the press as the “opposition party” and believes the best methodology of cowering the public into submission is by “flooding the zone with shit.”
It’s not a riddle as to where these kinds of people are coming from.
Yet, as the governor of California, Gavin Newsom likely wants to shed any tropes of him being some kind of ultra-liberal coastal elite that’s unelectable in our current political climate in which a raging, deluded racist and his band of corrupt segregationists control the executive branch.
This approach ain’t it, though.
No one wants to watch or listen to a potential Democratic presidential nominee give effusive praise to Kirk, find common ground with Savage, and exchange pleasantries with Bannon or any other Nazi-like right-wing provocateur.
Newsom netted a lot of headlines for agreeing with Kirk’s stance on trans athletes, but for all his posturing about it being an issue of “fairness,” the reality is the National Collegiate Athletics Association is made up of 1,100 colleges and universities in all 50 states that enroll more than 530,000 student-athletes, and according to NCAA President Charlie Baker, there were “less than 10” transgender athletes in the NCAA.
Michael Arceneaux is a New York Times bestselling author whose most recent book, “I Finally Bought Some Jordans,” was published last March.
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