Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is going to run for president in 2028. He is trying to run a two-faced campaign where he portrays himself as the obnoxious leftwing agitator to Democrats and the sensible, cordial, moderate voice to everyone else.
Newsom was confronted by conservative pundit Ben Shapiro about his press office calling the Immigration and Customs Enforcement shooting in Minneapolis “state-sponsored terrorism.” This is irresponsible, inflammatory rhetoric that puts ICE agents (and other law enforcement officers) in danger, over a justified shooting that only happened because a belligerent activist interfered with ICE operations and then hit an ICE officer with her car. Newsom’s team is putting that kind of rhetoric out there to scratch the itch of the delusional Democratic activist base that buys into the idea that ICE is President Donald Trump‘s personal Gestapo.
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When confronted by Shapiro about that rhetoric, Newsom disagreed with the sentiment put out by his own press office. He even went as far as to say that he does not believe ICE should be abolished, as the Democratic activist base believes. Were you to watch Newsom speak about it, you would think the “state-sponsored terrorism” rhetoric was from another Democratic politician entirely.
In a way, it is, because Newsom has been putting on a different face depending on the audience he is trying to reach. In the first episode of his podcast, sitting opposite conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Newsom acknowledged that letting “transgender girls” (more commonly known as “boys”) compete against real girls in girls’ sports was unfair, but that hasn’t stopped his administration from zealously promoting that policy. Newsom, in one breath, says that “parents know what’s best for their kids” in defending parents coming to California to transition their children, and then, in the next, defends California law preventing teachers from being mandated by their districts to keep parents informed if their children are trying to be transgender at school behind their back.
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And Newsom, of course, has whined and complained about Trump’s toxic messaging style, just for his communications staff lackeys to take up that same style under his name on social media. Newsom can flip from being the sensible, reasonable adult in the room to the dyed-in-the-wool progressive agitator, making our politics more toxic, pretending all the while that these two sides of his public image are not connected in any way.
This cuts to the core of how power-hungry Newsom is. He will pretend to be just about anything in pursuit of his presidential ambitions, even if that means embracing two contradictory public personalities depending on what audience he is trying to win over at the time. He will call ICE officers terrorists one minute and then disown that rhetoric the next, because nothing matters more to him than convincing enough people to vote for him so he can have more political power.