Washington Examiner columnist Joe Concha said Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is following his “instincts” in going “far to the left” to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.
Newsom compared Israel to an “apartheid state” while promoting his memoir in Los Angeles on Tuesday, suggesting its current leadership has pushed the United States toward a point where reconsidering military assistance may be unavoidable. Concha described Newsom’s comparison as a “textbook example” for how the governor is “the biggest shapeshifter” in politics.
“He’s never spoken in this capacity regarding Israel, as far as I can see, but his instincts are telling him to go far to the left with this kind of ridiculous, reckless rhetoric because that’s gonna get him the Democratic nomination for president,” Concha said on Fox News’s Fox & Friends First Thursday.
“He feels he has to go full AOC, full [Zohran] Mamdani, full [Rashida] Tlaib and [Ilhan] Omar with this blood libel against Israel.”
Concha added that Newsom’s “thirst” for the presidency and its power is “like no one we have ever seen,” and predicted the governor will say whatever he can to achieve this.
Concha said Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris are the current frontrunners for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. For Newsom, the strategy is doing “whatever it takes” to win the nomination, and then “worry” about the means he used to achieve this end later.
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Newsom confirmed in October that he is mulling a 2028 bid for the White House, saying he’d be “lying” if he denied it. The governor released his memoir, Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery, last month, and is touring the country to promote it.
Newsom is one of several prominent Democrats critical of the U.S. strikes against Iran, saying President Donald Trump is “putting Americans at risk abroad because he is unpopular at home.” Newsom also fired shots at other members of the Trump administration last month, calling Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “phonies.”