Gavin Newsom’s podcast is worse than you think

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Gavin Newsom’s podcast with Steve Bannon opens with one of the architects of the modern right telling the California governor that his goal for the next hour is to “convert” him.

“This is part of the process to unwind you from being a globalist to make you a populist nationalist. It’s a long journey, but I think you’ll get there,” Bannon told Newsom, who laughed and said he was willing to go down Bannon’s rabbit hole. Throughout the rest of Newsom’s podcast, Bannon spoke at length about how great Donald Trump’s economic and foreign policies were for America. Newsom occasionally pushed back, but Bannon would double down, and Newsom rarely said anything to that.

As I wrote last week, Bannon is a former Breitbart News executive, presidential campaign manager, and senior counselor to Donald Trump who spent four months in prison. He also coined the phrase “flood the zone with shit” in regards to his successful strategy for overwhelming the media and getting Trump elected.

The irony seems to be lost on Newsom, whose new podcast, This is Gavin Newsom, has so far featured three hour-long conversations with three conservative media personalities.

On the premiere podcast episode, Newsom sat down with Charlie Kirk, another person whose extensive track record of lies and immorality have left a path of destruction in their wake. Newsom shared that his 13-year-old son was enamored with Kirk and wanted to meet him. Despite California’s protections for trans student athletes, Newsom agreed with Kirk that transgender people should be excluded from their legal right to participate in sports as an issue of “fairness.” Newsom sat quietly while Kirk denigrated Black women authors, scholars, and activists. He spoke admiringly of Kirk’s commitment to religious conservatism, including his opposition to same-sex marriage, despite Newsom citing his own track record on same-sex marriage and gay rights as an issue that transcends “politics.”

I didn’t think Newsom was a good podcaster, and his conservative guests who have decades of experience with the format ran circles around him—not because their ideas are good or the things they said were true. They weren’t. But they spoke confidently, at length, and defended their positions on the rare occasions that Newsom pushed back or tried to criticize them. That’s what it takes to sway this kind of audience, not “civility,” which Newsom applauded Kirk for having.

But it was far worse than that. Newsom didn’t just lose a debate with Kirk. He wasn’t debating Kirk at all. He was establishing common ground with him. Newsom described how, over the past few years, he and his friends and family have moved rightward on the ideological spectrum. Newsom seems to want to keep winning elections. He asked the reigning conservative propagandists to tell him how they did it. And in the comments, conservatives celebrated the new legitimacy of their formerly fringe conspiracies, while Newsom’s defenders described being radicalized.

A sampling of top comments on that video: “I don’t listen to Steve Bannon’s show very often, but I’m always impressed at just how knowledgeable he is on both domestic and global policy.” “I never thought I’d be listening seriously to Steve Bannon and agreeing with him, but here we are.” “Wow Gavin is going deep, is Alex Jones next?”

As Newsom is chuckling with Trump’s former and current confidantes in his new podcast studio, Wired reports that Trump and Elon Musk are dismantling the federal government, pushing out tens of thousands of federal workers, and aiming to replace them with AI. Their illegal and unconstitutional orders and actions have already caused immense human suffering, with significantly more promised and on the way.

I do think that the left needs to have a strong online presence, including in the podcast space, to combat the information pipeline that is enabling the modern right. Newsom and other establishment Democrats who are acquiescing to the right and making everything worse will do more of the same on podcasts. Luckily, there’s already a growing community of leftist podcasters. After the break, for members I’ll share more of my thoughts on podcasting as a medium, what Newsom is doing wrong, and what someone in his position could be doing right.

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