In the spring of 2025, the Governor of California launched a podcast called "This Is Gavin Newsom" (TIGN). Although it can doubtless be heard "wherever you get your podcasts," TIGN also appears on YouTube, where every element of the set's design is symmetrical and balanced: Two brown armchairs, two table lamps, two bookshelves with very few books, two pieces of art. The visual is all matched pairs, the guests on opposite sides, different but evidently also the same, their feet in the same space, crossing all of the lines on the striped rug between them.

When Newsom announced the start of his podcast on X, he positioned it as a space for "real talk." For his very first guest, he chose Charlie Kirk, a conservative shit stirrer and the co-founder of Turning Point USA who goes around to college campuses conducting Q&A sessions and trying to shift the youth of America to the right. Having Charlie Kirk as his first guest was no doubt meant to be shocking and to generate headlines (check and check), but as a show of judgment - and based on what has happened since - this should be disqualifying.
Give us some advice, Charlie
Let's not mince words here. Charlie Kirk is a racist, sexist debate guy who thinks he knows considerably more than you do. He describes our society as "toxically feminine." He purports to believe the Big Lie about the 2020 election. He selects isolated facts from American history to paint our founders as moral heroes when it comes to slavery. (He would really rather schools didn't teach about racism, though, because that's just designed to make white people feel shame.) He platforms white supremacists. He's vehemently anti-trans. When you have a microphone, in short, you don't hand it to a bad actor like Charlie Kirk.
Lest anyone should think that Newsom is just a 57-year-old guy fumbling around with formats he doesn't understand, TIGN was not Newsom's first rodeo. When he was mayor of San Francisco, Newsom had a radio show. In 2012, two years after he was elected Lieutenant Governor of California, he tried to launch his own show on YouTube but ended up on TV instead, hosting a program called
"The Gavin Newsom Show." In
his first episode, he noted that his guests "have one fundamental thing in common: They have a story to tell, a message to share, and a vision for promoting the best ideas to move all of us forward."
All of us.
That right there is what you do with a microphone, as Newsom clearly knows. So why host Charlie Kirk, whose regressive ideas hurt more than half the population and drag America backwards?
The point, Newsom says at the start of the conversation, is to help people "understand [Kirk's] success." In case you're imagining an episode of
Alt-Right Playbook, that's not what happens. Newsom doesn't dissect Kirk's tactics to see what works or why it's been effective. Oh no. The Governor of California is just seeking out political coaching from a racist, sexist debate guy who wants Barack Obama in jail.
At one point, Newsom says, "Seriously, Charlie Kirk, give us some advice," and Kirk tells Newsom that if Newsom wants to move to the center, Newsom should step forward and denounce a trans girl in California named A.B. Hernandez.
To be clear, that's Charlie Kirk telling the Governor of the State of California to target a child in high school because she's good at the high jump.
And here's the thing: This was predictable. Newsom later told another podcast host that it was "predictabl[e]" Kirk would bring up trans athletes, and Newsom made Charlie Kirk his first guest anyway, which means that he both anticipated and welcomed what came next.
"I completely agree with you"
In response to Charlie Kirk's suggestion about moving to "the center," the Governor of California said to Charlie Kirk "I completely agree with you" that it's unfair to allow trans girls to compete against cisgender girls in sports.
I looked at that issue . . . [and I thought] 'it’s a handful of people, what the hell is this? It’s being weaponized. Just another [culture war] issue.' Until two years ago there was a state track championship. We had a trans athlete that was successful, and there was a video of the girl that lost, and she was devastated . . . it was very emotional, and it was very real. I remember calling my team in and I said ‘this is legit.’ . . . LGBTQ caucus [was] furious with me because I don't think it's fair.
So let's break this down. Newsom started off by recognizing that an extremely small number of trans athletes were being targeted by a massively outsized campaign of outrage on the right. He understood at least to some degree the vulnerability of those kids until he saw a video of one cisgender girl who lost, and she eclipsed everything. Her feelings became "real," and her loss "unfair."
When there's crying in baseball
Fairness in athletics has a few very important applications. Everyone has to meet the qualifications for the event. There is no cheating or sabotage. Everyone also has to put in the work, enhancing their performance through practice and preparation rather than use of, say, anabolic steroids. Beyond that, however, the concept of fairness does not particularly apply. Athletes have to come to the court or the field or the track with the bodies they have, the hours they've logged, and the skills they have built. That does not in any way mean, however, that the proverbial playing field is even. Some athletes are naturally predisposed to success in ways other aren't. Michael Phelps had a much greater lung capacity than his fellow competitors
. That was part of the body he had, and it was not controversial.
For female athletes, things are a little more complicated. We believe so faithfully in the idea that men are by definition physically superior to women that we have imbued endogenous testosterone - that is, testosterone produced naturally by the body - with a totally unique significance, sometimes barring cisgender women from competitions on the grounds that their bodies produce "too much" of it. Jaime Schultz
has written regarding this phenomenon:
Researchers associate physical performance with over 200 different genetic variations. More than 20 of those variants relate to elite athleticism. These performance-enhancing polymorphisms – PEPs – can affect height, blood flow, metabolic efficiency, muscle mass, muscle fibers, bone structure, pain threshold, fatigue resistance, power, speed, endurance, susceptibility to injury, psychological aptitude, and respiratory and cardiac functions, to name just a few. We don’t disqualify athletes with these types of predispositions.
All of those genetic variations, in other words, are by definition advantageous, and yet unlike testosterone, we layer no controversy on top of them. You get to have them or you don't. Maybe you literally cannot defeat someone else no matter how hard you work. As my father used to say, them's the breaks.
Khelif became a household name on August 1, 2024, after Italian boxer Angela Carini voluntarily ended their match in less than 50 seconds. Carini sank to her knees in the ring and wept, having ended her Olympic dreams with the world looking on. Almost instantly, Carini's pain - like that of the girl in the viral video watched by Gavin Newsom - became "real." In the discourse, she became the helpless victim of this terrible aggressor, who was not celebrated for her athleticism or her achievements, but demonized for being something she wasn't.
This is another problem with anti-trans bigotry as it pertains to women's sports: You don't have to be trans to be defined that way in the discourse. Because it's not actually about transitioning. It's about threatening white supremacist patriarchy. Just
ask Caster Semenya and the host of other Black and brown cisgender women deemed to have a forbidden genetic advantage. "Women" must be protected - but by women, we really mean white women, crying girls, the fragile feminine. It doesn't matter to transphobic white people what Imane Khelif or Caster Semenya or A.B. Hernandez have had to endure. White women are innocent; therefore, those who defeat them are guilty.
"Sports really opened that door"
After hosting Charlie Kirk, Gavin Newsom went on to appear on The Shawn Ryan Show- and again, this was a deliberate decision, presumably planned in imitation of Trump's appearance on Joe Rogan, except for the part where Newsom and Ryan don't agree.
Until they do.
In his conversation with Shawn Ryan, Newsom traveled still farther down the anti-trans path than he had with Charlie Kirk, suggesting that 25-year-old people might still be too young to receive gender-affirming care. Twenty five. Newsom entertained, in other words, the idea that the State would not or should not recognize the bodily autonomy of all its denizens based upon whether it approved of them and their conduct. He also demonstrated a willingness to let flagrantly false talking points stand undisturbed.
Here's what happened, as construed and reported in
Conservative Fix:
In a moment that perfectly captures the moral confusion of the modern Left, California Governor Gavin Newsom couldn’t bring himself to say whether an eight-year-old child is too young to undergo irreversible gender “transition” procedures.
During an appearance on The Shawn Ryan Show, Newsom was asked a simple, direct question 'Is eight years old too young?'
Rather than give a straight answer, Newsom launched into a meandering, awkward response that revealed more about his political ambitions and ideological hang-ups than any real concern for children.
'Now that I have a 9-year-old just became nine. Come on, man, I get it,' he said vaguely.
First, it's important to say what Newsom was evidently too nervous or too ignorant to say: For the average eight year old, transitioning is purely social, which is to say, some combination of a haircut, clothes, pronouns, and a name. Any assertion to the contrary is fearmongering, bigoted ignorance and nonsense - which as the governor of a state and a supposed ally to LGBTQ folks, Newsom should know. Instead, he cites the age of his kid and says, "I get it." Get what, exactly?!
Justice for all
Two years ago, Gavin Newsom saw a video, and that has led him to be uncertain and mealy-mouthed about the fundamental rights and deep humanity of trans people. "I think the sports issue really opened that door for me," he told Shawn Ryan. What that shows is "the sports issue" working exactly as intended: as a gateway to dehumanization.
And Newsom either is or wants to be seen as willing to abandon a vulnerable minority who are targeted by the Right, so much so that he wanted to give Charlie Kirk a microphone to help "enlighten" the rest of us. We see this repeated in Newsom's treatment of encampments set up by the homeless. We do not need a candidate who seeks to lead us out of this terrible valley up to a plateau where fascism is gentler and kinder, with equality for some. We need a leader who has read and understood the words of Dr. King. We need justice, all the way at the top of the mountain. And we must have progress for all.
This is hardly Newsom's first time flirting with fascist ideas, but now he's hanging around in fascist bars, too. Obviously, we need to defeat Trump. He is not the guy, and this is not the way.