An editorial by Chico News & Review
The five most frightening words that could ever be uttered have finally sounded across the universe.
Gavin. Newsom. Has. A. Podcast.
In all seriousness, any question of whether California’s governor plans to run for president in 2028 should be put to bed. He absolutely does. And Newsom also appears to be pushing his chips in hard on a political theory that’s been floating in the ether since December – that Donald Trump’s decisive win against Kamala Harris marked the nation’s very first “podcast election.”
Adherents to this model argue that by sitting down for long, unscripted, often meandering talks on several of the top podcasts in the world, Trump, J.D. Vance and Elon Musk managed to humanize themselves, appear conversationally unafraid and send their messages out to millions of Americans who aren’t engaged in traditional media. This is one potential explanation that Democratic strategists are now reaching for when they try to reckon with Trump making electoral gains with young people and most minority groups, as well as winning every single battleground state. For the pundits who believe that podcasting made the difference, they point to Trump showing genuine vulnerability when sharing on the Lex Friedman podcast that he doesn’t drink because his brother died of alcoholism; or that Trump seemed like a regular dad on Theo Von’s podcast when he noted that he’d appeared because his son, Baron, was such a huge fan of Von’s; or that Trump came across as a guy who’d be comfortable at any blue-collar dinner table after breaking down all his favorite UFC fighters with mega-podcaster Joe Rogan.
Of course, the counter-argument to the podcast narrative is that Trump, Vance and Musk actually gravitated towards that medium because it put them in front of massive audiences while allowing them to claim any damn thing that they wanted without facing meaningful push-back or reality checks from the respective hosts. The specific genre of podcasting that MAGA dominated in 2024 is a type based on civil, if not friendly, conversations between host and guest. Critics would say that turned out to be very exploitable – but only one political party was smart enough to recognize this. Newsom hasn’t just taken this to heart, he now has the gas pedal all the way to the floor and is trying to get ahead of the curve.
Many progressives were quickly surprised that Newsom’s first three podcast guests were arch-conservative influencers and diehard California bashers. That surprise soon turned to flat-out shock when Dems realized that the governor had little interest in debating these MAGA thought-leaders, as he’d previously done with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, but rather was trying to be downright chummy with them. Embracing the Roganian style of long-form conversations, Newsom approached talking to Charlie Kirk, Michael Savage and Steve Bannon as if he was having an evening beer with a next-door neighbor who happened to have a different political sign on their lawn.
The Kirk interview is the most awkward of the three. Kirk became internet-famous by going onto Ivy League college campuses and randomly debating students who were eager to parrot their professors’ talking points, but were totally unprepared for any rhetorical responses. Newsom’s conversation with Kirk made national news because of a remark from the governor about trans athletes, but that was only eight seconds out of an hour-long discussion. For most of that podcast, Newsom kept asking Kirk why Democrats got hammered so hard in the last presidential election.
“I represent most of the country – still the majority of the country doesn’t have a college degree,” Kirk pointed out to Newsom. “And, if I may bluntly critique the Democrat party, you guys have become so college-credentialed and educated that you snobbishly look down on the muscular class of this country, the people who kept things running and afloat during COVID; and the majority of the country didn’t go to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech or Cal Berkeley, right? The Republican party has become far more representative of them.”
Newsom’s response: “Love that.”
Um. Okay. Do you?
At the end of that podcast, Newsom and Kirk found common ground on one topic: Neither thinks that hedge funds and private equity firms should be allowed to buy up California’s housing stock. But, overall, it’s a weird and uncomfortable dialog to listen to.
Newsom seemed to be on better footing when interviewing Michael Savage. It turns out that Savage, a conservative writer and commentator in the Bay Area since 1974, has been in the Newsom family’s orbit since the Ford Administration. The conversation between Savage and the governor seemed tinged with a shared nostalgia, if not whimsical affection, for a bygone era in San Francisco machine politics.
“We’ve known each other over the course – on and off – for a couple of decades,” Newsom reflected. “I was joking with Trump the other day in the Oval Office, where I said, ‘You calling me ‘Newscum’ is not novel. Savage had a version of that early on.”
This seemed to make Savage light up with joy. “Any Twosome Newsom!” he recited, alluding to the governor’s championing of marriage equality. “I was in a North Beach restaurant,” Savage continued, “your dad, may he rest in peace, Judge Newsom, was there, and I was introduced to him. You were the Board of Supervisors Chairman, and you’d just introduced gay marriage at resolution. And I said, ‘Judge, your son just made the biggest career error of his life. He’s finished.,’ And he said, ‘You know what Michael, I agree with you.’ But guess what? We were both wrong!”
Newsom chuckled, admitting, “He did agree with you, by the way, he was an old Irish Catholic from the west side of San Francisco.”
Of course, Newsom casually stressed that he’s proud of his role in bolstering marriage equality. He and Savage joked about the glory days of San Francisco, found some commonality on free speech issues, and strongly agreed that the Trump administration is mishandling the environment.
Surprisingly, the friendliest guest to Newsom was populist-Trump-whisperer Steve Bannon, the Left’s most reviled figure in the first Trump administration. Bannon, though still a MAGA stalwart, has recently become a critic of the most-reviled figure in the new Trump administration, Elon Musk. Bannon mentioned to Newsom that what Musk has been doing with DOGE lacks transparency and accountability, spurring Newsom to say, “Here, here!”
At one moment in that conversation, Bannon the populist seemed more progressive than Newsom, at least as it pertains to reigning in Big Tech (Newsom recently vetoed California’s landmark AI safety bill).
“Let’s talk ‘techno feudalism,’” Newsom said, referencing a term that Bannon’s been throwing around. “What do you mean by that?”
“When Obama got this heads up about Facebook, this briefing on social media,” Bannon began, “that became his weapon to take on the Clinton Mafia, because he was a relatively unknown guy taking on the most-embedded political apparatus in the Democratic party in history; and he took it on using social media … There was a deal kind of made – a Faustian bargain – that we wouldn’t pursue anti-trust, we wouldn’t pursue [Federal Trade Commission] or the Justice Department, we would allow the Tech oligarchs in the age of the algorithm to basically dominate … We’ve allowed them to become the most-powerful people on earth … Capitalism is about markets and profits, they are now about digital platforms and rent – they’re rent-seekers … These guys are techno feudalists who want digital serfs who serve that, and when you add to everything they want to do with advanced AI, cutting out entry-level managerial and administrative low-tech work, we’re going to have a massive problem with unemployment and they’re just on their merry way.”
Newsom’s response: “Yeah.”
Umm … That’s all you’ve got on that subject, Governor?
Ultimately, Newsom’s podcast is mildly interesting from a sociological perspective, but there is nothing brave about him talking to national conservatives who are willing to be cordial. If Newsom was really brave, he’d have on as a guest Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta, who could debate him point-by-point about why he’s willing to kill off California’s wild salmon population and destroy the largest fresh water estuary in the western hemisphere, all to placate his mega-donors in Kern County and Los Angeles. Or, if Newsom was brave, he could invite Dan Whaley onto his podcast, who’s a highly intelligent small business owner in the Sacramento County town of Hood – a historic place that the governor’s Delta Tunnel plans would basically wipe of the map. Or Newsom could sit down behind the mic with any leader from the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians or the Buena Vista Band of Me-Wuks, all of whom have cultural erasure concerns around the Delta tunnel. So far, Newsom has freely ignored these First Nations while pushing for the financial gains of billionaires in Southern California.
The governor of the greatest state in the Union may be a podcaster now, but contrary to what Newsom may have you believe, he’s not a podcaster with a pair of stones.
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