Don’t Let His Based Tweets Make You Forget That Pick-Me Presidential Hopeful Gavin Newsom Actually Sucks

Newsom can successfully ape the worst politicians in America because he’s not so different from them.

Don’t Let His Based Tweets Make You Forget That Pick-Me Presidential Hopeful Gavin Newsom Actually Sucks

Gavin Newsom—the Democratic governor of California and also a name you might choose for the obviously corrupt president in an action movie—is on a roll. “Gavin Newsom’s Latest Role: Social Media Troll,” the New York Times recently proclaimed. His “Trump act” is “winning raves from Democrats,” according to The Hill. He’s “trolled his way to the top of social media,” said Politico

If you’re still on Twitter, you’ve likely seen people with account names like Midwest Democratic Dad retweeting Newsom’s all-caps posts saying “rofl,” or posting AI-generated images of him as Captain America, holding kittens, or being blessed by the Founding Fathers, Ronald Reagan, and Harriet Tubman.

This praise is coming Newsom’s way because, among the many pages he’s taken out of the Republican playbook, he’s adopted the pathetic GOP strategy of “imitate Trump.” In his case, of course, it’s not to curry favor with our senile authoritarian leader, it’s to get under his skin. And to be fair, it’s working: A White House spokeswoman told the Times that “it makes sense that he would try to mimic the President’s wildly successful communication strategy. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but Gavin’s behavior is just getting weird at this point.” 

But amid chuckling at Newsom retweeting side-by-side photos of him and JD Vance in high school—the joke being: Newsom was/is hot and Vance was/is not (get it??)—I implore you to remember that Newsom can successfully ape the worst politicians in America because he’s not so different from them.

Newsom is at his most cartoon-evil-villain when it comes to the rights and dignity of the most at-risk Americans. In March, he had notorious rightwinger Charlie Kirk on his podcast in order to throw trans teenagers under the bus, and earlier this summer, he repeated worries about trans teen athletes stealing “opportunities” from cis teen athletes—on, you guessed it, another podcast. (As an aside, you should not have time to have your own fucking podcast if you’re the governor of the fourth-largest economy in the world.) 

But Newsom’s favorite vulnerable demographic to stick it to is the homeless. Since the Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that jurisdictions can criminalize sleeping outside, he’s doubled down on efforts to clear homeless encampments across the state, bragging that 16,000 such communities have been demolished—and gleefully participated in destroying some himself. He’s been personally involved in eliminating such encampments for years (see the above photo, which is from 2021), including Oakland’s Wood Street camp in 2022.

When authorities clear homeless encampments, peoples’ makeshift homes—made of corrugated metal, plywood, tarps—are destroyed, as are the belongings inside of them. Years of people’s lives are thrown away, and the support systems that develop within these communities are shattered. Yes, such camps pose health risks, and likely house drug users or drug markets. But you know what doesn’t help people already disproportionately facing mental health or addiction issues? Total destruction of their belongings and way of life. 

Newsom’s success as a politician thus far (and I mean that in the most derogatory way possible) is due to his adoption of whichever policies or perspectives will get him attention and, in his calculus, win him support—that’s what he’s doing with the Trump-y tweets, and with the gerrymandered congressional district map he approved yesterday. Both moves illustrate what is appealing about Newsom to broad swathes of the Democratic base: a sociopath opportunist on their side willing to take on the sociopath opportunist in the White House. And while I famously agree that the Democratic Party needs leadership that is willing to challenge Trump’s brownshirt administration, I’m not sure we need it from someone who hates queer and/or poor people as much as Trump and his friends.


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