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Congratulations to me and everyone else who has internally cringed over the years whenever anyone hailed the inevitability of a Gavin Newsom presidency — because that is very likely off the table now that the governor of California took a break from looting the meager possessions of the unhoused and kicked off his inaugural This Is Gavin Newsom podcast with an obsequious interview with none other than tiny-faced fascist diaper fetishist Charlie Kirk.
Now, Newsom has been known to have some unseemly friends. His ex-wife is Kimberly Guilfoyle and he was very friendly with personal injury lawyer Tom Girardi, which I personally found sus even before Girardi was found guilty of having stolen money from his clients — which included widows, orphans and burn victims (Girardi was married to Erika Jayne from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and spent much of that “windfall” on her “singing career”). But Charlie Kirk? That’s a new low.
Not only did he not challenge Kirk … he basically hailed him as a genius and begged for his advice.
Kirk’s advice was to really jump on the “banning transgender girls and women from sports” train, which Newsom eagerly proclaimed he was on.
“The issue of fairness is completely legit. So I completely align with you,” Newsom told Kirk. “And we’ve got to own that. We’ve got to acknowledge it.”
Except for how it’s not.
As my friend Parker Molloy has graciously explained more than a few times, nothing betrays this so much as the fact that these people want blanket bans on all trans athletes in all gender-segregated sports rather than a considered discussion about which sports and under which circumstances which athletes would have an advantage due to the gender they were assigned at birth.
No one is saying “OK, well, we’re just talking about athletes who didn’t go on puberty blockers or take hormones, in specific sports where a body typically classified as male would provide an advantage.” No, they’re saying all trans athletes regardless of whether they actually have any advantage or not. Why? Because it’s not about fairness, it’s about bigotry.
But wait! It actually got worse. At other points in the podcast, Newsom also conceded to Kirk on basically every other issue related to transgender people, including their healthcare.
The conversation didn’t stop there. Charlie Kirk quickly pivoted to other transgender issues, bringing up Vice President Kamala Harris’ support for incarcerated transgender people. Newsom agreed that the Kamala is for they/them ads were politically damaging, calling them “devastating.” When asked about transgender incarcerated people, Newsom responded, “This was even more challenging… because this is issues of people who are incarcerated getting taxpayer-funded gender reassignment… that is a 90/10 [issue],” referring to how he believes such policies poll. He also appeared frustrated that Harris “was in the video and expressed support.”
At the close of the podcast, Charlie Kirk shifted the discussion to transgender healthcare, stating, “I encourage you to learn about the butchery that is happening under chemical castration in this state. The American people are overwhelmingly against it.” Newsom responded, “Yeah. I think we have to be more sensitized to that.”
Are you fucking kidding me?
Let me be very clear. The reason the Right is “winning” on this issue is that they are willing to get up and stand up for their terrible, terrible beliefs in a way that many Newsom-y Democrats are not willing to stand up for good beliefs. They will see people like Charlie Kirk working convince people to their way of thinking and then say “Oh! People just believe what they believe, there’s no convincing them!” and decide that the only way to give the people “what they want” is to concede.
Newsom also let Kirk run the conversation on book bans, and allowed him to claim that the Moms For Liberty were banning “porn” — which, no they fucking were not. They were banning books that acknowledged the existence of LGBTQ+ people, and that is not “porn.” Newsom, sadly, failed do do even the most cursory research for this part and therefore had to concede to Kirk that all 4,000 of these books were definitely hardcore porn that would horrify people should they ever see them.
Somehow, Newsom was so proud of this moment that he literally posted it on social media for all to see.
Newsom was also very curious about Kirk’s ability to persuade people and “get converts” and asked him how Democrats can do that, to which he said “Get better ideas, Governor” — which the Right thought was a fabulous own.
Let me tell you, Gavin Newsom, how Charlie Kirk now does that. Charlie Kirk used to be considered fringe, used to be considered too far Right — but Republicans didn’t disown him. Instead, they happily platformed him. Instead of slamming them down as a way to seem “reasonable,” they let them say what they had to say and refused to take the Sister Souljah bait. Democrats, on the other hand, are terrified of young activists and thinkers and therefore don’t platform them very often because “Oh! What might they say?!? What if they say we should defund the police?!?!?!”
And instead of hosting a podcast with those people, they host Charlie Kirk. So yeah, that’s why Charlie Kirk has more influence. Shocking, I know.
This will likely be the end of Newsom’s presidential aspirations as a Democrat, though maybe it is the beginning of his aspirations as a Republican. Perhaps he’ll even get back together with Kimberly now that she’s split with Junior!
OPEN THREAD!
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
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