Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom, once the wokest of the woke, has now . . . woken up.
Newsom has started a new podcast in a blatant effort to grab a bigger megaphone ahead of his 2028 run at the White House.
One of his debut guests: right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, a Trumpist par excellence.
To whom Newsom admitted that “it’s deeply unfair” for biological men to compete with women in sports and that “We [i.e. Democrats] are losing . . . We’re toast.”
This comes on the heels of the governor’s stark turnaround on the question of his state working with ICE to deport criminal illegal migrants, including his vow to veto a bill hampering prison coordination with the agency.
For anyone who’s followed Newsom’s career, this is a sea-change: He has long been among the loudest and most active fighters for woke policies on immigration, gender, crime and everything else.
But now he’s finally heard the message from voters on these issues, and he’s seems to be listening.
Yes, he’s only doing it because he figures it will help him win in ’28, and it took a historically awful wildfire torching his political capital to prompt a change.
But he gets it; this is progress. Welcome to reality, Gavin.
A few other prominent Democrats are on the same future-facing wavelength, even without the crass political calculus, most notably Pennsylvania’s Sen. John Fetterman.
Fetterman’s political transformation from a bog-standard progressive into one of the few sane Democrats in Congress started when he was among the first to admit that Trump was not Hitler and that he might even have a point.
But Oct. 7 was clearly an eye-opener: He woke up to, and vocally slammed, the deep-reaching rot within his party.
Now he’s a lonely fighter for a sane left in a Senate whose Dem complement seems otherwise content with vacuous Trump-hate and endless kowtows to the Jew-haters, woke racists and socialists.
Fetterman’s carved out a path that puts him on an intersecting course with Newsom.
Which raises an intriguing but out-there idea: Is he a potential veep pick for the California gov (or whoever ends up at the top of the ticket)?
Don’t forget that with Newsom’s turn, a wider field of cover has opened for other Dems with a brain in their heads to follow suit.
Those who want to win in 2026, let alone any who have eyes on the White House, will do just that.
