When the Trump administration flooded the streets of Los Angeles with National Guard troops to quell minor protests, California governor Gavin Newsom put up vociferous opposition. When Texas passed an audacious mid-decade redistricting plan, Newsom spurred the California legislature to follow suit. Now Newsom is taking aim at the president with an extensive trolling campaign, often posting online in the bombastic, all-caps style of the president. Newsom’s online antics have provoked the ire of those on the right — and even some in his party — but the governor is hoovering up attention at a time when many voters are questioning the direction of the Democratic Party. On the latest episode of Pivot, Newsom joined Kara Swisher as a guest co-host and talked about the origin of his trolling strategy and what he hopes to accomplish with it.
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Kara Swisher: I want to talk about your new role — troll-in-chief, as one newspaper put it. In the last few weeks, you’ve flooded social media with all-caps posts, insults, AI-generated memes mocking Trump and his policies. You recently got into the merch game selling MAGA-inspired Bibles, red hats, and even “Make America Gavin Again” flags, which is really funny.
Fox News has been melting down. Dana Perino said that if she were your wife, she’d tell you’re making a fool of yourself. And while a lot of liberals are loving this, you have critics on the left who say the Democratic Party needs to do more than be an anti-Trump party. I disagree. I think this is highly effective, especially that you’re not stopping. Talk about the strategy. I have theories on it, but I’d love to hear it from you.
Gavin Newsom: I just wanted to put a mirror up to the absurdity of all of this. I wish Dana Perino and others have made that point months and months, years ago. The all-cap tweets, Trump putting himself on memes as the Pope or putting him on memes as Superman or with his shirt off, on top of different superhero characters or dinosaurs. I mean, it’s comical. And yet, it’s become so normalized and socialized in a way that’s not even critiqued on the extreme right. And so I just wanted to challenge that and challenge all these pundits out there, challenge all these people, all these acolytes, people that are just fawning over a guy who puts his picture up on Mount Rushmore that does text like a 13-year-old or a 10-year-old.
It’s humiliating, it’s embarrassing. So this is a mirror, and it’s a mirror not just to Trump himself, but to these networks. These are the chatbots for the administration. And it’s not just Fox, it’s One America News, it’s Newsmax, and it’s all the folks in the right-wing media. And I’m glad they’re melting down over it. Their situational unawareness is rather jaw-dropping, and we’ll keep at it.
Swisher: How did you come up with it? You have given credit to the whole team in creating these memes. But someone asked me about it and I said, “Well, this does sound like him, the person I know.” You can be very funny and cutting and sarcastic and stuff like that. It’s sort of in your wheelhouse to do this.
Newsom: I appreciate it. Look, I think there’s one answer to that and then there’s a subtext. This thing, really, it’s about iteration. I’ve always been willing to try new things. So, I’m always trying to challenge my team: “Let’s see what works.” That’s why I went on Fox. That’s why I did the debate with Ron DeSantis. That’s why I was one of the first Democrats to go on Truth Social. That’s why I started a PAC a few years ago and only went to red states and started raising awareness and resources in parts of the country where I feel the Democratic Party walked away. And so, it’s part of that, but it’s also specifically part of what we were on the receiving end of after the fires in January in L.A.
Swisher: And before that.
Newsom: And just a different level of mis- and disinformation. And to your point about before that — look, the recall. I’m romantic. I always think all politics is local. I was sort of born and bred with that construct, but that’s not the case, obviously. And I intellectualized that, but I never fully internalized it until the recall. I had guys like Newt Gingrich and I had folks like Mike Huckabee and the RNC nationalizing their grievance. And, of course, all the folks at Fox and One America News, et cetera, coming after us.
So I started to shift our approach then. It really got into high gear after the fires, when Trump and Elon Musk were coming after us and they were winning on just rank lies about water policy and all the b.s. But what they did to federalize 4,000 of our National Guardmen and women and put 700 active-duty military on the streets of L.A. — that’s when we just said, “We’re on the other side of this.” And we told the team, “There’s no permission slip now. Not even forgiveness. You just go and we go hard, and we don’t stop.”
Swisher: And you don’t stop. That’s what’s interesting about it — it’s relentless, which is very different. I had told, I think it was Kamala Harris, you’ve got to be almost promiscuous now from a social-media point of view. You have to be everywhere constantly and not stopping, which I think characterizes this quite a bit. When you hear criticism that it’s too much or cringey even from the left or right, how do you answer that?
Newsom: You know how I answered it? I haven’t really said this publicly, but I send my team a YouTube video of Marshawn Lynch on 60 Minutes Sports when he was asked about his running style. And he says, about going into the front line, “Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.” So this notion of communication — I could not agree with you more. Trump’s success is the simplicity with which he communicates the same thing in that cadence over and over and over and over and over again. And we move week to week. It’s Infrastructure Week, and all of sudden, now Child-care Week and it’s Foster-care Week. And as a consequence, we have weak messaging, and they’re winning the narrative war.
Illusion rules. Facts don’t matter. That’s what Fox understands. That’s what Trump understands. He floods the zone, and we’re constantly on our heels and not on our front toes. And so, what we’re trying to do is, yes, fight fire with fire with the redistricting substance and in terms of our communication style. And we’re trying to keep at it. Look, you mentioned the Patriot Store. Just look at the stuff he’s selling. Perfumes? This is embarrassing. The guy’s hawking Bibles. Ours is sold out, so if you want it, sorry, it’s sold out.
Swisher: I was hoping to get one.
Newsom: And if you want a real prediction, we’re about to put a meme coin out. And you know what? Donald Trump, we’ll see how well your coin does versus our coin.
Swisher: Wow. You’re doing a coin. Of course you are.
Newsom: We’re just trying to turn up the heat.
Swisher: Is it going to be called Gavin Coin?
Newsom: No, I think Trump Corruption Coin.
Swisher: Oh, okay. That’s a little long.
Newsom: This is one of the great grifters of our time. It’s just jaw-dropping, and none of this is normal. Again, none of this is funny. I mean, it’s funny in one respect.
Swisher: It is. You’re being funny.
Newsom: It’s extraordinary what’s going on. It’s jaw-dropping. His family is sent out before these foreign trips, doing deals. Deals are literally done before tariffs are imposed. The crony capitalism that’s going on, the people that are selling their souls in this country. I mean, that was insanity at the Cabinet meeting. And Lutnick, talking about socializing and nationalizing companies like Lockheed. And you’re worried about Mamdani and some grocery stores? And these guys are taking tidings from AMD, 15 percent from Nvidia. I mean, this is serious stuff. The grift and the corruption, the self-dealing, is something that we will continue to call out. I’m really worried about this country. I think we’ve crossed the red line. I think it is much more acute and profound than many people think. And I’m just trying to wake people up. That’s what this is all about. Wake up, everybody.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
