Is This What It Takes to Beat Trump?
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Every story about Gavin Newsom must be prefaced by the acknowledgment that the California governor is a bloodless political chameleon whose moral code seems to be permanently up for negotiation. This is a man whose knee-jerk reaction to Donald Trump's victory in 2024 was to jump into a podcast studio with the unhinged right-wing ideologue Charlie Kirk and characterize the participation of trans athletes in women's sports as “deeply unfair.” That pivot, like so many others in the Newsom doctrine, seemed to be the result of a man guesstimating the current orientation of the vibe shift and quickly closing ranks around his newly triangulated opinion. (It is also precisely why the governor is in the midst of a reactionary flip-flop on homelessness policy .) Add to that his other cartoonishly two-faced foibles—like the time he ate dinner at the French Laundry during the height of COVID—and you can understand why nobody ever seems to trust him.
For a long time, Newsom's shiftiness seemed to elude his self-perception. The world saw a knavish operator, but when he looked in the mirror, the governor saw the heir apparent to Obama. And in that sense, the best thing the governor ever did for his political career was to finally give up the ghost. At last, Newsom recognizes who he has always been, and I think that's why his Trump impression has struck a chord.
If you somehow don't know what I'm talking about, for the past few weeks, Newsom and his press office have delivered the bulk of his social media messaging in a distinctly Trumpian diction. The tweets are written in all caps and are smattered with random old-guy quotation marks, parentheticals, and pejorative nicknames. (Karoline Leavitt is KAROLYIN' LEAVITT, Ted Cruz is CANCUN CRUZ, and Newsom himself is AMERICA'S FAVORITE GOVERNOR.) The governor launched this gimmick in conjunction with his plan to redraw California's congressional maps ahead of the midterms, a fitting move given the antidemocratic creep Trump's brinkmanship has brought about. Naturally, Newsom has also matched Trump's penchant for self-aggrandizement, reposting garish AI–generated collages that trumpet his greatness. One recent highlight featured the governor, draped in the American flag, standing proudly over the Golden Gate Bridge, as Thomas Kinkade–esque fireworks sparkle in the distance . It looks like something you'd find in a bizarro version of the Cracker Barrel gift shop. Newsom captioned it “WOW, AN HONOR!!” (The spaces between the words and ensuing punctuation are an especially nice touch.)
There's lots more where that came from. The governor has begun to sell merchandise, including a red hat emblazoned with the words Newsom Was Right About Everything! and a coffee mug that reads Newsom 2026 . (The year is a nod to California's redistricting efforts, which will be on the ballot this fall, as well as to the man's not-so-secret presidential ambitions. The description for the mug: “Because apparently term limits are just suggestions now.”) Unshackled by the solemnity that the Democrats voted upon themselves once they became the country's “resistance” back in 2016, Newsom now has the leverage to playfully stretch the truth in a distinctly MAGA-ish way. (“I NOW HAVE THE HIGHEST POLL NUMBERS I'VE EVER HAD, SOME IN THE 60'S AND EVEN 70'S,” he posted over the weekend .) The whole spectacle got especially surreal when Newsom uploaded an AI illustration of Kid Rock—in full Uncle Sam regalia —giving his endorsement to the governor (“Kid Rock Wants You to Support Gavin Newsom”). The musician did no such thing and was apparently annoyed enough by the post to correct the record on his own X account . It has been clear for quite some time that the old rules of engagement are irrelevant. Newsom, to his credit, is playing the game.
I am loath to admit that this gambit is working on me. I've never particularly liked Newsom, but it has been liberating to indulge, for the first time in my life, in the elements that have made Trumpism so appetizing for a vast cross section of Americans. You know what I'm talking about. The mean-spiritedness, the compulsive name-calling, the prioritization of emotional truth over objective truth, and, perhaps most importantly, the break from the shrill ultimatums about the death of the republic. That's not to say that those warnings aren't valid—rather, it's just that, eight years in, at a time when everything else feels bad, and after all those warnings have gone soundly unheeded, it is nice to have someone telling the president to eat shit in the only language he could ever understand. The Trump approach is to flood the zone with a cavalcade of irrelevant bullshit that briefly blots over our mental faculties before dissipating. (Remember when we were all focused on Greenland?) If hardcore MAGA partisans are, for the first time in their political activation, being forced to spend mental energy on something equally as stupid and futile, then I'm willing to call that a win.
Now, I don't think any of this is a good omen for our political culture. The Democrats have tried so many different approaches to disgrace Trump, all of which have been centered on the idea that such an unserious figure was never presidential material. But after the man repelled those attacks and entrenched himself in the White House, aping his buffoonishness certainly looks like a kind of defeat. Just four years ago, Joe Biden won the office on a campaign that promised a return to normality. These days, everyone has conceded that the game is broken. It's a race to the bottom, and—as he always does—Newsom is angling for a head start.
He has good reason to keep it up. The parody has assisted in the governor's surging support ahead of the still-way-off 2028 presidential cycle. One poll has him second in the field of likely candidates , behind only Kamala Harris. But data this early is rarely predictive, and I seriously doubt that Newsom will maintain this momentum when we get closer to the primary. The transactional nature of his political philosophy will eventually outweigh his flair for the moment, and I can't imagine ever voting for someone who seems seconds away from selling me out. (The coke dealer–esque slick-back and high cheekbones don't help, though one of those problems could be solved.)
So that might mean that I'm underestimating Newsom's electoral future. One constant refrain I hear from California Democrats is that they believe their governor to be legitimately sociopathic, a creature of the night who desires nothing but power. And yet they can't wait to vote for him in the general election because, as one voter put it , “he may be a psycho, but he's our psycho.” I think that about sums it up. When the governor's Trump impression broke through, I noticed a few Trump-aligned media figures circulating some dirty laundry in an attempt to discredit him. It was a photograph of a young Newsom at some glitzy gala with the top two buttons of his white shirt unfastened. He's staring at a woman's breasts with a big, sloppy grin plastered across his face. An image like that might have hit its target a few years ago, but we're well through the looking glass now. The incumbent is a twice-divorced casino boss who harbored a personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Our secretary of defense has a history of ordering three gin and tonics at breakfast . Gavin Newsom might honestly be the man for the moment—and what a sorry moment it is.
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