Gov. Gavin Newsom wanted to play nice with the MAGA movement after Donald Trump's 2024 election win. Before Trump's demoralizing victory in November, the California Democrat had been building up his reputation as a political brawler, willing to go toe-to-toe with even the creepiest figures of the MAGA movement. In 2023, he even had a faux-presidential debate with Republican Gov. (and soon-to-be-also-ran) Ron DeSantis of Florida. Even as Newsom's theatrics annoyed some folks, I can't deny it was effective. When people outside of the politics-and-journalism professions talked to me about a Democrat they found intriguing, it was almost always either Newsom or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
Then Trump won, and a whole bunch of Democrats panicked. Although it was a squeaker of an election — it's easy to forget that, despite sweeping all seven swing states, Trump barely won —his false claims of a "landslide" got into many Democratic heads. Incorrect conclusions were drawn, among them that the country had dramatically shifted to the right and, therefore, Democrats must as well. Newsom became the face of this error, because he can't help but screw up with the same drama he brings to everything else. In an ill-fated effort to make nice with MAGA, Newsom started a podcast promising "honest discussions with people that agree AND disagree with us," all "without demeaning or dehumanizing one other." But that goal was undermined when he offered lightweight, normalizing interviews to MAGA leaders like Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon, ignoring how they built their careers by demeaning people.
