Gavin Newsom has memes and dunks, but does he have anything else?
The California governor has received a lot of attention lately for adopting a new persona as the most prominent troll of President Donald Trump and Republicans. Some news outlets have called this his “dark woke” pivot, noting that he’s using Trump’s tactics against him.
This is certainly boosting the profile of a man who very obviously wants nothing more than to be the Democrat 2028 presidential frontrunner. But is it working?
My colleague, Tony Kinnett, noted on our daily podcast “Top News in 10,” that Newsom has certainly attracted a lot of attention lately with his aggressive social media strategy. Kinnett said that on X Newsom is “up 450% in terms of the number of followers since mid-June” and that since June 1 his Google searches have gone up “1300% compared to August 1st.”
That’s impressive growth, largely produced by the alignment between his style and the demands of the Democrat base, which wants confrontation and blood, not abundance and triangulation.
But I also agree with Kinnett that this stratagem is unlikely to work nationally, that it’s a “paper tiger” because Newsom’s policies are unpopular around the country. He has to carve out a narrower path relying on antipathy to the president, but not much else.
Unlike Trump, whose social media putdowns seem natural and in character, Newsom’s sudden left-wing edgelord character seemed entirely and hastily manufactured. Why was Newsom playing nice with the Right just a few months ago before making an abrupt heel turn? Is there a real Gavin Newsom? Does that person exist?
In addition, it must be said that Trump didn’t just make his way back to the White House based on his social media posts. He did it by aggressively promoting popular signature issues like building the border wall, no tax on tips, and opposing wokeness. This helped him not only secure his base of voters but grow it.
We did get a brief glimpse of Newsom attempting to reach out to non-leftwing voters and talk policy. Right after Trump was elected Newsom went on a short-lived media tour to engage with conservatives.
In an interview with conservative radio host Charlie Kirk, Newsom said that it was “deeply unfair” for men identifying as women to play in women’s sports. He said of underage transgender hormone treatments on another podcast, “Yeah, I mean look, now that I have a nine-year-old, just became nine, come on, man.”
This was all talk. After taking some flak from the Left, Newsom very soon stopped going on conservative shows. And while he apparently thinks it’s wrong for men to play in women’s sports, he’s apparently fine with letting it happen.
Not only has Newsom done nothing to change the laws in California, he has lashed out against the Trump administration for trying to end the unfair practice of men playing in women’s sports in California. He said of the Department of Education’s lawsuit against men playing in women’s sports in California on Title IX grounds, “dramatic, fake, and completely divorced from reality. This won’t stick.”
Come on, man. Sports will be unfair whether you like it or not, I guess.
Newsom is simply an empty, moving object with no core and no substance to speak of.
Yes, California has been a big, rich state for a long time. Newsom likes to remind everyone of that fact. But is that due to the governor and the policies of his fellow Democrats who now run a one-party state? In truth, California is currently just treading water.
California is rightly seen nationally as a poorly governed Garden of Eden, a state that’s coasting on its perfect location, incredible natural endowments, and the success of previous generations. It’s a sanctuary state for illegal aliens, a fading dream for departing native Californians. Even Hollywood is in decline.
You can bet that a large percentage of the enormous number of former Californians living in Texas, Idaho, and elsewhere, look at California as an example of what not to do.
Recently, Bed Bath & Beyond Executive Chairman Marcus Lemonis put out a statement explaining that he would not be opening stores in the Golden State because of its tax and regulatory environment that “makes it harder to employ people, harder to keep doors open, and harder to deliver value to customers.”
It was a damning statement echoed by many other businesses that have struggled to operate in California. Newsom responded by totally OWNING Bed, Bath & Beyond.
Maybe that was the right political tactic. After all, what else could Newsom say? He could go back to his old “California is not a high-tax state” canard, but nobody’s buying it.
The problem for Newsom is that California doesn’t get much for its high tax status. California’s roads and infrastructure are crumbling or are simply not being built. It’s massively expensive and unrealistic “alternative” energy and transportation projects, like the bullet train to nowhere, are going nowhere fast. The result is that Californians pay some of the highest energy prices in the nation. And the state spends absurd amounts of (at one point entirely untracked) money on homelessness that only seems to increase the amount of homelessness.
So, in one sense Newsom is making the right call in becoming the meme governor. He has little to run on in California that isn’t outright embarrassing or completely out of step with most of the country.
What does Newsom have besides a record of intensifying partisanship and the same old unpopular policies Democrats have been peddling the last decade? What’s his signature issue, making an already partisan but nominally “independent” redistricting process more rigged than it already was?
So it is with Newsom. Under his slick marketing to left-wing Boomers and Zoomers, just like what was once said of my hometown of Oakland, there is no there there.
