Sports personality Stephen A. Smith torched Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) over his views on gender-affirming care for children, saying the governor sounds more and more like a socialist.
“One minute, he’s a Democrat. Another minute, he sounds like a damn socialist,” Smith said Thursday on Straight Shooter with Stephen A. Smith.
Smith said Newsom brags about running the fourth-largest economy in the world in the state of California, but “in the same breath, he’s talking about transgender folks that don’t even make up 1% of the population.”
Newsom has voiced support for policies that protect minors’ access to gender-affirming care and limit the mandatory disclosure of LGBT identity by schools, but he has not publicly advocated for minors receiving gender-transition medical procedures without parental consent.
In July 2024, Newsom signed legislation that prevents California schools from requiring staff to notify parents solely because a student identifies as LGBT or requests different names or pronouns. This effectively keeps a child’s gender identity hidden from parents.
“‘I just have the heart that if a kid wants to transition from male to female, he can’t help that he was born this way. And even though his body says he’s a male, inside he’s a female. And he wants to make that transition. I’m for doing so without parental consent,’” Smith said, mocking Newsom.
“You can’t tell my child to go across the damn street without my permission,” Smith continued. “What the hell you doing signing off, verbally or otherwise, on the notion that a kid can do something like that, like a sex change, without the parental consent? The hell is wrong with people?”
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Smith warned that Democrats need to avoid making comments like these on gender-affirming care and instead come together, arguing that the type of rhetoric he has perceived from Newsom is what he associates with socialists.
“We got to pay attention to where the tea leaves are and where stuff is being dropped,” Smith said. “That kind of verbiage has to get out of the mouths of Democrats.”