NEWSOM’S NUKE — Gavin Newsom kicked off his new podcast today with a bang. The California governor and prospective presidential candidate broke with Democratic Party orthodoxy on a host of issues , including one of the most polarizing of all — the participation of transgender athletes in female college and youth sports. In his debut podcast episode, Newsom departed from the party line by suggesting that Democrats were wrong to allow transgender athletes to participate in female youth sports, distanced himself from the left’s use of pronouns and the gender-neutral term “Latinx,” called police defunding “lunacy,” and agreed that there had been some questionable practices in the leadership of the Black Lives Matter organization. The governor’s comments, which came during a conversation with Charlie Kirk, the Donald Trump ally and campus culture warrior who leads the organization Turning Point USA, weren’t especially controversial — they were largely in line with how most Americans think, according to polls. Yet they stood out because, in the wake of Trump’s November victory, so few Democratic officials have been willing to publicly acknowledge where the party may have gone off the rails, and also because the party has shown little tolerance for dissent on social issues in recent years. Newsom and Kirk discussed the attack ads that Trump’s campaign used to politically ruinous effect against Kamala Harris, featuring her support for taxpayer-funded gender transition-related medical care for detained immigrants and federal prisoners. “She didn’t even react to it, which was even more devastating,” Newsom said. “Then you had the video [of Harris] as a validator. Brutal. It was a great ad.” On the issue of transgender athletes in female college and youth sports — currently headline news in California, where a high school trans athlete’s recent record-smashing performance has attracted international attention — Newsom made clear his support for trans rights generally but called it “an issue of fairness. It’s deeply unfair.” Newsom expressed sympathy for trans people and flagged their higher rates of suicide and depression. “The way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is an issue that I have a hard time with,” he said. But the governor conceded there was a question of fairness in competition. “I am not wrestling with the fairness issue,” he told Kirk, who contended that it was unfair for transgender women to compete in women’s sports. “I totally agree with you.” Newsom’s remarks were immediately denounced by many Democrats, though the criticism was relatively muted because of his pioneering support for LGBTQ+ rights as mayor of San Francisco. Provoking a reaction may have been the point. In breaking with his party on trans athletes and underscoring his willingness to go toe-to-toe with top conservative communicators and leaders — such as Kirk, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Fox News’ Sean Hannity — Newsom is claiming a distinctive space in a party and remaking the 2028 Democratic fault lines . And as the governor of the nation’s biggest blue state, he provided cover for other Democrats who are seeking a different kind of messaging in their support for trans rights. To better understand Newsom’s move and its political implications, Nightly reached out to Christopher Cadelago, the California bureau chief at POLITICO who’s covered Newsom for years. Gavin Newsom’s suggestion that Democrats were wrong to support allowing transgender athletes to participate in female college and youth sports is generating quite a bit of buzz today. It’s a contentious issue that Republicans have zeroed in on with considerable success, since polls show a majority of Americans favor requiring trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex assigned at birth. What’s Newsom’s motivation here? I’ve spoken with Newsom about transgender issues and the broader culture wars several times, publicly and privately, over the last two years. Some of the impulse for speaking out on trans youth athletes in girls sports comes from the fact that he’s a dad of four school-age kids — including two daughters — who hears directly from other parents of school-age kids in gyms, on the soccer field and on baseball diamonds. “Every one of my friends is freaked out about this,” Newsom told me today. There’s also a part of Newsom that delights in walking up to the line on taboo issues and saying things you’re not supposed to say out loud. He sees his brand as being on the leading edge of political debates. He resists going small, trusts his radar for seeing around corners and loves stretching out and reaching for the next bold stroke. That’s the part of him that looks at Donald Trump and, while he disagrees with most of what the president is doing, Newsom can’t help but admire and even envy the chutzpah with which Trump does it. In granular detail, Newsom is always talking about ways he can break through the noise; ensure his face and ideas and work are appearing in more group text chats and social media feeds. He’s always thinking about how he can be a better media maestro. Then there’s the cold political reality. Newsom has now closely watched his old friend and sometimes rival Kamala Harris lose two presidential campaigns. Harris’ 2024 campaign has fought like hell — sometimes to the point of gaslighting — in arguing that the Trump campaign’s attacks on her over trans issues didn’t add up to much. We all know that’s nonsense because it contradicts not only data, but common sense. Some of her aides were in denial. Others just couldn't bring themselves to admit it because it’s not politically correct. But Democrats have to confront why they’re clinging to the losing side of an 80-20 issue. Because if they don’t move past the denial stage, they risk losing again in 2028, and perhaps for longer. Newsom knows this. So, he decided to trot out with another Paul Revere moment . His remarks came on his debut podcast, called “This is Gavin Newsom.” I can’t help but ask: Since the job of governing the nation’s biggest state is pretty demanding — and since Newsom already has a national profile — why is he doing a podcast? It’s cliche now, but 2024 was the “podcast election.” Newsom wants to be on the leading edge of platforms and issues, and podcasting allows him to combine those two subjects. This came up in the Charlie Kirk interview, but there’s growing consensus that Democrats can’t subordinate their old, tired talking points and be original and authentic and defend their positions in real time. They too often struggle to defend their positions in spontaneous, unscripted environments. There’s so much caution; it just doesn’t work anymore. We’ve all become too skilled at calling out bullshit. Newsom is trying to carve out a lane in a space that’s dominated by MAGA voices. I think Newsom envisions a time two years into the future where he’s hosting a top podcast in politics and public affairs. What does he get from that? Well, potentially a lot. Let’s face it. Lots of people still see him as a cardboard cutout, his hair perfectly shellacked by a metric ton of goop. Or they view him as the woke-serving whipping boy of Fox News from liberal California — the “failed state” and land of fruits and nuts. Think what you want of him, but the guy is not just a pretty-boy resistance warrior. He can actually go pretty deep in the weeds on policy. He has nuanced views. And the way to reveal that is in multiple hour-long conversations. Newsom’s comments were made during a one-on-one discussion with a guest that many of his podcast listeners might not have expected — influential MAGA-world figure Charlie Kirk, an influential campus culture warrior and close ally of Donald Trump. Was Newsom trying to make a particular point? Democrats won’t win by staying in their comfortable information bubbles. You can only do so many hits on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show. Not only should Democrats venture out of their comfort zones, they should go to places where they have to actually defend their ideas. But many in the party are scared. Everyone freaks out about everything. Let’s face it — folks on the right just don’t trigger so easily. When I asked Newsom recently about who else he wants to have on, he pointed to CPAC’s lineup. The challenge will be how to calibrate the level of pushback. Newsom wants to have real conversations. But there’s still an expectation from Democrats that he won’t let ideological opponents just drone on without sufficiently challenging, if not their motives, at least their views. That’s the balancing act I’m eyeing. Newsom’s comments about transgender athletes come with some risk, at least within his own party. Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, for example, faced a torrent of criticism from Democratic Party activists and officials for saying something similar after the November election. What has the Democratic reaction been like today? Newsom’s bonafides on LGBTQ+ rights are better than Moulton’s. There aren’t many rising Democrats out there who have done as much for as long for the community. Newsom upset leaders in his own party when, as San Francisco mayor in 2004, he defied state law and issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Even the late Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a close Newsom supporter, blamed him for John Kerry’s defeat that year at the hands of George W. Bush, saying the marriages were “too much, too fast, too soon” and that they helped energize conservatives. Some liberals, and especially folks inside Newsom’s own Capitol community in Sacramento, are telling me and my colleagues that they’re upset and disappointed with him. A few rolled their eyes or shook their heads. One Democratic state lawmaker licked a finger and hoisted it upward to catch a brief gust of imaginary wind while offering a knowing look. And there’s still a question about whether he’s really taking on his own party. After all, polls show a solid majority of Democrats don’t believe trans athletes should play girls’ sports. It means that while he is challenging Democratic orthodoxy, and certainly the views of some politicians and activists, he’s not necessarily taking on the voters. Are Newsom’s remarks on trans athletes -- and his criticism of language policing, cancel culture and defunding the police -- an attempt to carve out a distinct lane in the 2028 Democratic Party presidential primary? Newsom can’t run for president as a California progressive, or even a progressive at all. He can’t pass their purity tests. His only credible lane is center-left. It’s the Joe Biden lane. He’s only one show into the podcast, but a clear motivation seems to be an attempt to give people a view of him in full. Embedded in this calculation is a belief that some of the old rules of politics just don’t apply anymore — that there’s no reason why you can’t be both politician and pundit rolled into one; that the more you talk, the more leeway you’ll get. Still, Newsom can be a polarizing figure. It’s hard to find people with subtle views of the governor. What listeners are going to see — if he’s true to himself — is a risk-taker who is very much the author of his own words (Newsom, for example, detests giving teleprompter speeches). He cites flurries of numbers and statistics, but he also operates on feel and vibes. He debated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; trades texts with his old “pal” Sean Hannity of Fox News and much prefers crashing a NewsMax set to sitting for a staid interview with a public radio broadcaster. In the chat with Kirk, Newsom talked about the asymmetric nature of appearing on CNN for three minutes when politicians on the right can plug into an entire network of connected broadcasters. He wants to be seen as unscripted and unpredictable and authentic. And for that to happen, he’s going to have to keep saying interesting and newsworthy and, yes, controversial things. But it all raises a question: Can he be both Bill Maher-like and the next president? Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at cmahtesian@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie .
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