Al Zon Media.
All Right, it could happen here. It's me, it's Robert, and we are gathered here today to talk about one of the most annoying things that can happen on your telephone, which is that you can be sent a tweet from Gavin Newsom.
Which is just no one needed that.
It's already really bad. I see really bad things on my telephone every day. I don't need to see a tweet from Gavin Newsom. If you're not familiar with this, you're living a better life than me, and I'm proud of you. But I'm going to give you some context here for those of you who are not familiar. Gavin Newsom is the governor of California. He's also kind of been the presumptive of twenty twenty eight Democratic candidate for
quite a while. He's term limited out running for California governor again, so he won't be doing that, and his term will end in January of twenty twenty seven. He had for a while to I to dismiss claims that he was interested in the presidency, but he's been a lot more of about it recently. Yeh, I don't believe any claims that he was not interested in this for a long time. He has definitely tried to cast himself this summer as the sort of leader of the resistance
type figure. Yeah, he hasn't done that by, for instance, ordering the California National Guard to go home, protecting people from the massmen with guns snatching them in the street, or even standing up for trans kids. Instead, he has focused on I guess what you could generously call Twitter trolling, like it's well, we're going to get into it. It's extremely annoying. So about a week ago now, I think the eleventh of August was when he began newso began
his social media rebrand. He did this by posting about himself in all caps as America's favorite governor. His posts since then have mimicked the mc donald. Trump has a pretty distinctive posting style, right, Yeah, Newsom's have written in all caps. Trump doesn't tend to do. Trump tends to capitalize sporadically and as far as I can tell, entirely randomly. But Newsom's doing it in all caps. He uses over uses exclamation marks. I should say, this beef between the
two of them is not new right. Trump has has called him new scum on true social and I don't think Trump can claim the intellectual property to new scum. I've seen that one. Yeah, yeah, like it's up there with like hair Gel, Hitler and Ussolini. Like yeah, anyway, if you if you're buying a firearm in California, you will hear someone say one of these things almost without fail.
Yeah.
The claim that Newsom's team is making is that he's like holding up a mirror to Trump's bigot treaty by doing this Trump style posting. But I think in doing so, he's really illustrated the difference between them is not as profound as you'd think or hope. He in one example called Scott Presler Nancy Mace. It's got Presler, gay conservative right wing figure, and then he was called out for missed gendering presla Bay. This will shock and amaze you Tommy Lauren.
Wow.
Yeah, which yeah, no one knows, Okay, Yeah, he responded, quote, you sound woke. This really isn't funny. It's just bigotry, Like comparing gay men to women is an old, worn out and lazy jab.
Yeah.
So when you combine this with him having right wing figures like Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon on his.
Podcast and it just for reference, folks. I don't know how much detail we can get into legally here, but this being our business, we are aware of the numbers different podcasts do. And Gavin Newsom's podcast is not like it does. Okay, but there's certain podcasts about, for example, bad people in history that lap at several times. So like the star power that Gavin Newsom has, I'm not
seeing it. We're not talking about a guy who has shown evidence that he is capable of on his own generating like a super loyal fan base or continued interest in his personality. Now I'm not saying that's that on its own. Is it's a bad thing. A lot of politicians who are very competent at certain things are not competent at that, And in fact, most of the worst politicians we have are also the people who are the best at that and building a fan.
Base, so to speak.
But what I'm saying is that Gavin Newsom is obsessed with doing something, being this Trumpian populist figure that he has not exhibited faculty for right. Yes, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, no, And that's what I'm saying too.
Is a he's confusing engagement with actual political action, right.
And he's confusing the kind of engagement that you get on social media when it's someone else's algorithm, And a lot of the engagement is like, not people who are going to vote for you or support you, but people who the algorithm is pushing your content to because it knows they'll get pissed off off by it, right, exactly that I'm not against you know, pissing off conservatives, but that doesn't help you necessarily, right, Like, there's not a clear benefit to us in this.
Yeah, good things piss off conservatives, but pissing off conservatives and not inherently a good to a useful thing. It's just a thing.
It's not enough, right, Like, I again, it can be.
I'm not sometimes that's necessary just for morale purposes alone. But again, I don't really think Gavin Newsom is making the right scared. I don't think he's breaking their morale. I think he's just kind of creating content that people on the left are sharing because it pisses them off. People on the right are sharing because it makes them laugh. I think they think it's sad more than anything else.
And obviously You've got a chunk of like a decent chunk of like centrist dim types who like Newsome, and I guess maybe it's working for some of them, but I don't think it's broadening his support. I think there's a single voter, especially in a swing state, who was, like I wasn't wasn't going to vote for Gavin Newsom until I saw him mimicking Donald Trump's tweets.
Yeah, exactly like he is doing, in a sense what Harris did, which is this consistently failed Democrat political strategy that they seem so addicted to that no amount of losing will break them of it, which is moving to the right to try and capture moderate Republicans. Right, They've done this. Everything's Trump took the Republican Party closer closer to fascism, right. Like, I want to give an example of this, his Gavin Uson talking to Sean Ryan about transgender athletes.
I'll be cannon with you. I looked at that issue and I said, boy, they're just exploiting this. It's a handful of people. What the hell is this? It's been weaponized. It was just another cultural issue. Intel 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. Video one around everywhere and it was very emotional. I was very real. I remember calling my team man, I said, this is legit,
and I did this podcast with Charlie Kirk. Unsurprisingly, he brought it up and he said, tell me, that's not fair. I said, it's not fair. You're right. My party was pissed. LGBTQCCUS furious with me because I don't think it's fair.
It's not.
But because you oppose sports doesn't make you homophobic, and my party needs to stop saying that.
Yeah again, I know who he thinks this is going to help. He believes it's a religion. Effectively, among a lot of establishment dims that there's a whole huge chunk of voters who are just itching to vote for a Democrat if they weren't in favor of all of these icky cultural issues that are hard to touch that the
right is. You know, it spends so much time harping on, and I think part of what they're seeing and where a lot of the logical disconnect comes into effect, is that they see how much money conservatives and time and discourse conservatives spend talking about this and obsessing over it, and they believe, well, oh, if we if we just kind of fold on these people, then we've taken this great weapon out of their arsenal, and they'll be helpless
because they're stupid. And I don't think these are fundamentally very smart people in the political sense of the world. I think they bad politicians. I think they're bad. I think they were good politicians in terms of a competency sense at a prior age to get to where they were, But the ground has changed, and intelligence is largely a
product of adaptability, and they have not proven adaptable. And I think what's actually going to happen, because we've seen this is if they throw trans people under the bus, as they're actively talking about doing, the right will grab another chunk of their coalition and start ruthlessly trying to destroy that group of people, and these people's suggestion will once again be Okay, well, we got to, you know, throw those people under the bus, because then we'll deny
them that weapon, and eventually you won't have any Democrats left, Like yeah.
Right, they'll come after same sex marriage. I'll come after fucking interracial marriage, and Newsom will try and find the middle.
Yeah.
Like where he has received praise for this is in the legacy media. I want to quote here from a caw Matter's op ed, which suggests that Newsom was quote someone trying to hold space for a hard conversation in his podcast, He's not.
You don't have conversations with Charlie Kirk. He's never had a real one in his life.
Yeah, the conversation is not hard to have, right, trans people deserve the same fucking rights as everyone else. It's very easy to have. Also, he's having this conversation with someone who agrees with him, Like, I would love to see him tell a young trans woman that she can't play on the fucking third string the high school volleyball team, because then he's going to see a kid cry too. I don't want to go over the like trans people can compete sports, like I've made my living as an
athlete for much of my life. This is bullshit, and it's fundamentally disrespectful to women athletes to continue to suggest it they're biologically inferior. But I do want to talk more about Gavin you some slide into mean politics. His press office claimed that after the fires in LA the claim this in New York Times in a piece of our link, he was troubled by the misinformation that came out. Apparently was his first fucking time in encountering misinformation on the internet.
Like oh wow.
Yeah, Well, when you think about the ease with which he lies, right, yeah, absolute comfort he has bullshitting It sort of makes sense until it hits him. He doesn't care because he's lying too. So they decided to take the fight to the internet. I guess they began with Star Wars memes. And then when the redistricting debate in Texas, we've covered extensively on executive disorder, was kind of reaching
his peak. Newsom sort of begun this. I know you are, you said you are, but what am I kind of tendency in his posting, he posted in all block capitals, I'm not going to shout Donald Trump. If you do not stand down, we will be forced to leave an effort to redraw the maps in CAA to offset the rigging of maps in red states. But if the other states call off their redistricting efforts, we will do the same.
Thank you for your attention on this match. Sorry, it's hard to read because it's entirely unpunctuated apart from at the end there these tweets aren't on his personal account or the official governor of California one. They're on an account called governor use some press office. But that count does have their little gray tick mark that you can
get in Twitter now for like government accounts. Then he moved on to AI generated images and signing his post with initials like Trump does, claiming Kid Rock had endorsed him, which isn't true. Incidentally, they did this exactly a year after Donald Trump posted an AI generated image of Taylor Swift with the Swifties for Trump montage, which shows how much time they spend looking at Trump's post rather than
doing anything fucking useful. Then they moved onto mocking Greg Abbott for using a wheelchair, saying he rolled over for Trump again, like, you do not build a political coalition by mocking people with disabilities. There are a million things to fucking hate Greg Abbot, for I could spend an hour talking about the loathsome shit that he has done, but using a wheelchair is not one of those things. If you cannot find anything else that really shows a
paucity of democratic politics. Right now, let's take a break and we'll come back.
Awesome, All right, we're back.
Unfortunately, and probably predictively, Newsom has received praise from all over the legacy and media for these posts. The NYT quoted, it's actually unclear of they quoted. I don't know if this was just a mistake that they haven't corrected. But it was phrased like she said it directly, but it wasn't in quotation marks, so I'm a little clear. I'm just going to assume they quoted this.
Lady.
Sarah Roberts, a director for the Center of Critical Internet Inquiry UCLA, said quote, mister Nuisan's posts are perhaps grabbing so much attention because they stand out for the rest of Democratic party's ineffective approach of playing its safe and proceeding as if it's business as usual. And then just to double down on this useful podcast idiot John Favreau tweeted quote, I mean it's pretty clearly a parody of
Trump's absolutely insane, all caps off to nonsensical posts. Probably while all the people in my life you aren't political junkies, keep reaching out to say they don't know much about Newsom, but think the tweets are hilarious, humor and mockery can be quite effective. Neither of them say what they are effective for. Right, No one seems concerned that these make no material difference, and he is doing them instead of doing things that make material difference.
Right.
I'm going to play another clip from Chris Hayes here off you.
Governor Gavin Newsom and his team have figured out a very entertaining way to deal with Donald trumpet As a rhetorical level, They've got a new social media strategy that is both I got to say, pretty damn funny and I think extremely effective, mocking the president with a spot on impression of his very weird communication stock. Since Newsom jumped into the ongoing redistricting fight, his official Twitter account has been posting Trump style. Donald has finished, he is
no longer hot. First the hand so tiny, and now me Gavin C. Newson have taken away his step. Many are saying, we can't even do the big stairs on Air Force one anymore.
Uses the little baby stairs now sad as.
All the Trump trademarks, all capital letters, random quotation marks, little parentheticals, complete unhinged absurdity.
I thought that was a good one.
I hate Kid Rock GCN reference to Trump's infamous I hate Taylor Swift, another drags a vice president to it. Not even JD just Dance Vans can save Trump from the disastrous maps war he has started. Not even his eyeliner lines look as pretty as California map lines.
He will fail as he always does.
Sad and I, the peacetime governor of our nation's favorite, will save America once again. Many are now calling me Gavin Christopher Columbus Newsom because of the maps. Thank you
for your attention to this matter. Beyond the mockery of Trump's text post, Newsom has also been posting Trump style AI generated images of himself, including this I think absolute masterpiece of Newsom, deep in a moment of reflection or prayer bank by three Maga icons and the laying of hands Kid Rock, who he hates, Tucker Carlson, and the angelic spirit of the recently departed Hulk Hogan again a spot on mockery of Trump, who isn't doing any of
this satirically. What has been equally hilarious has been to watch the joke just go soaring over the heads of Trump's sick of fants in the.
Media for the last week.
Gavin Newsom, and why am I giving him advice? You had to stop it with the Twitter thing. I don't know where his wife is. I want his wife. I would say, you are making a fool of yourself. Stop it, Do not let your staff tweet. And if you're doing it yourself, put the phone away and start over. And if you want. He's got a big job as governor of California, but if he wants an even bigger job, he has to be a little bit more serious.
Yes, right, be more serious.
Stop posting exactly like the president the United States does. Newsome's account responded to that advice quote, Dana ding Dong Pirino never heard of her till today is melting down.
Because of me. God and C. Newsom.
Fox hate that I am America's most favorite governor ratings King saving America. Trump has lost his step and Fox is losing it because when I'm type American that wins. Thank you for your attention this matter again. It is just it is a stark reminder with someone else doing it of how truly utterly deranged our current president sounds whenever he communicates and also how accustomed we've all become to this very very weird behavior.
I know, we wouldn't be talking about this suse he was just bad tweets, Right, We're talking about it because I think he shows a fundamental inability of the DNC to meet the moment right now.
Yeah, we're talking about it because people are dying and more people will die as a result of this administration's policies. Other people are being imprisoned, and like I, you know, the damage being done you know, to medical science, to the future of humanity, to the future of this country is tremendous and escalating. And the fact that like this is the best a major a major contender for the Democratic presidential candidate in twenty twenty eight has been able to pull.
Out so far, is like terrifying.
And again, obviously no one should be reliant upon the dims.
But unfortunately also like what are you got to do? What am I going to do? Right?
I don't have the resources of the Democratic Party, I don't have a bunch of elected leaders listening to me. Like, because of the status of our situation, individual people in small groups and towns, and you know, we talk about mutual aid on this show we talk about unions. All of these increased personal resiliency. They increase the ability of groups and of individuals within groups to be resilient. But none of that is going to stop the fucking DHS
from turning into the SS. Right, Yeah, and the Democratic Party clearly fucking isn't either. But the fact that this is what they're doing instead of effective resistance is I mean, it's important. I wish there was more to say than we should know how badly they're failing.
Us, right, Yeah, like a world where Democrat gets elected in twenty twenty eight, it's getting less awful less quickly, and we should want yes, right, Like, I'm not one of these Like acceleration is no.
I just I don't think that's going to help either.
Yeah, yeah, right, look right now, it is accelerating, and it is bad. There are so many obvious challenges Democrats can make. And I want to play Robert, have you seen this Graham Planter for Senate campaign?
Ad? No, may not?
All right, I'm going to play this for you, Like I think it's it's good as a contrast, right.
But I love most about many of the people I have never met, people who are more hard scrabble, even in a place that requires you to work like two or three different jobs. We have watched this state become essentially unlivable for working class people, and it makes me deeply angry. My name is Graham Plattner, and I'm running for US Senate and Maine to defeat Susan Collins. A decade of military service, going overseas, farming oysters to feed my community, diving to lend a hand to other fishermen,
trying to start a family. But everywhere I've gone, it seems like the fabric of what holds us together is being ripped apart by billionaires and corrupt politicians profiting off of destroying our environment, driving our families into poverty, and crushing the middle class. I did four infantry tours in the Marine Corps in the Army. I'm not afraid to name an enemy, and the enemy is the oligarchy. It's the billionaires who pay for it, the politicians who sell
us out. And yeah, that means politicians like Susan Collins. I'm not fooled by this fake charade of Collins deliberations and moderation. The difference between Susan Collins and Ted Cruz is at least Ted Cruz is honest about selling us out and not giving a damn. People know that the system is screwing them. They know it in their bones. Nobody I know around here can afford a house. Healthcare
is a disaster. Hospitals are closing. We have watched all of that get ripped away from us, and everyone just trying to keep it all together. Why can't we have universal health care like every other.
First world country.
Why can't we take care of our veterans when they come home. Why are we funding endless wars and bombing children? Why are CEO is more powerful than unions? We fought three different wars since the last time we raised a minimum wage. I'm not pretending to have all the answers, but I know that I'm asking the very questions. When I tell people around here that I'm running for Senate,
sometimes the initial reaction is what. But when I tell them why, I'm doing it because I truly do believe that we can build a system that is going to represent working people. The number one response has been, well, thank god, somebody's going to do it. You're supposed to fight the things you love. This is our home, and I will fight tirelessly for it for you. It's Mayner's first in Maine always.
I mean, that didn't seem bad. No, it's good. That's that's a solid ad.
Yeah, yeah, like the BA is reasonably low. But like that dude hit it, I think.
I mean, yeah, yeah, like I would say that's just outright good, like if I were if I were crafting an ad to run from other than the fact that he's lived a different life, but like how he's talking about the oligarchy, how he's talking about the lack of progress on things like minimum wage and how unacceptable it is, and like how the difference between Susan Collins and Ted Cruise is that at least Ted Cruise is honest.
Like, yeah, I'm on board this guy. This guy seems like he rips.
I would vote for that dude, Like yeah, sure, he might turn into a fucking fatimen, but like.
I mean, they can all get milkshake ducked. But he's saying the right things at this point.
Yeah, it's remarkably straightforward, right, Like yeah, and yet that seems to evade most Democrats.
He's got the audio of a car ad. But I guess if it works. It works. That's the thing.
I don't know. I'm not familiar with the Platinu race, so I'm not sure where the polling showing.
This video is like two days old, Like he's extremely fresh. So yeah, I will say that visually it hangs together. Dude, us is the same open cell wetsuit.
I do.
Like, he didn't just buy all this shit, Like, didn't buy an axe and chopping for the first time in this video, right right.
Right, He didn't do the normal weird democrat trying to reach out to a rural thing of like posing awkwardly with a shotgun.
Yeah, yeah, Like this is a dude, and just like physically he appears to have done some work with his hands.
Yeah, he looks like a working class guy.
Yeah, let's compare this to like Newsome has not done the material things that he could be doing instead of tweeting. Right, Trump didn't call it the California National Guy. In the Insurrection Act, he used Title ten, section yeah one two four zero six of the US Code that section state's orders for these purposes should be issued through the governors of the states. It also outlined protigues for DC which we don't care about.
Here.
I didn't see why he could at least try to force the issue in ordering the guard to go home. He's pursuing a court case yet, but leg forced the crisis because we're already in one. He has not taken a single meaningful action to stop ice snatching people from our communities in California, nor has his Attorney General taken a single meaningful action to stop individual sheriff's departments from
violating SB fifty four. SB fifty four, if you're not familiar as a California Values Act, which limits which inmates can be transferred to ICE custody and when. It doesn't oblige anyone to transfer them, but it does allow them to transfer them if certain felonies have been committed in
the last fifteen years. The San Diego Sheriff has been accused of violating this are linked to a KPBS article on that where they transferred to someone who, according to claims in the article, had a twenty one year old conviction. Where As I said, before the cutoff fifteen years, Newsom could do something about the surveillance which is being installed
all over California. These licensed plates readers at the ones at San Diego has spent thousands, if not billions, of dollars on these license plate readers have had their information shared with federal agencies more than one hundred times in May alone. According to cal Matters, that is a violation of California law. Specifically, it's Senate Bill thirty four, which limits the sharing of licensed plate data. Rob Buntter issued an advisory, but again, this is resulting in our communities
being harassed, right, Californians being snatched. Newsom has done nothing about that. He could stand up for ant house people, but instead, alongside Todd Glory, he has led the charge against Todd Gloria is seemingly intent on driving our city into debt to pursue Castro approach.
Against Sea unhoused.
Newsom posed for a photo shoot, destroying unhow's people's property. He hasn't done a single thing that puts him at any risk. Right. He's presenting himself in this Sean ram podcast the big risk taker because he spoke out about fucking teenage girls running, right, But he hasn't put his neck on the line once for marginalized people in California.
You're anywhere else, absolutely not.
I think where I want to end is I don't want you to engage with nuisance tweets like that doesn't help. He's going to mistake that for making a difference, right, because I think for a lot of people in the legacy media and probably knew some of his friends, the real tragedy of what's happened in the last eight months is that they have to see scary, nasty stuff on
their telephones. So seeing something funny on their telephone seems like an antidote because it's not their community, it's not their people, and it's not people they fundamentally give a shit about either. That I think is why to them this seems effective, and hopefully to you, as it does to me, it seems completely effective.
Yeah.
I don't know how much else to say. It's nice to see guys like Platner at least seem to be figuring it out. There's not I've been looking into it and there's not There's not much polling. There's not really any polling because of how recently he announced his bid to show how well he's doing. Other than that, the video has got like two and a half million views something like that, which which is good and seems to
be spreading well online, but that doesn't translate electorally. What we do have electorally is that polls in Maine show that the Democratic Party is historically unpopular, including with Democrats. This is from a July survey. There's a good article in PBS that's just titled they roll right over many Democrats think their party is weak ap n RC whole finds. Oh sorry, this is actually no, sorry, this is overall across US adults.
Sorry.
The initial article I had seemed to be saying that it was this was just in May. No, this is this is nationwide. Right, So, I mean, I think that what Platner has seen, the opportunity he's seen, is real. Then there are a lot of people who are not at all interested in voting for a Republican, who have not been swayed to the right, who identify as Democrats but hate the party and think it is weak. Right, Like about two inten Democrats, according to this poll, describe
their party positively. One intent said it was empathetic and inclusive. That's terrible, right, And that is that I mean, that shows that just what we were saying, kind of based on our gut, which is it's a bad idea to hang people out to dry because you don't think you can defend them. You think that it'll be beneficial politically
to make the choice to, you know, let them die basically. Yeah, And it seems like Democrats largely are responding by saying, well, this party doesn't give a shit about us, and they are ineffective. They can't do fuck all. Right, Yeah, and that's definitely what's happening. So yeah, I don't know if Platner is going to win, but I'm growing more convinced every day that there's opportunity for people who are actually
willing to fight these bastards. Yeah, and you understanding that fighting these bad isn't just like, well, let's give them almost everything they want and hope that somehow lets us win.
Yeah. Yeah.
Talking of like not leaving people out to dry, for instance, talking about trans women in sports, he says it's a distraction from the things that impact Americans materially every single day. Then he said, I'm dedicated to a quality and justice for all in this country. And I think the specific topic has become such a touchstone of the media discussion because it pulls away from the conversation that needs to
be happening, which is getting every American affordable healthcare. It's not the best response, it's not the worst one either, Like, and I think he is right. For most of these conservative people, they don't care about women's sports, right, They're not there when women are getting shit prized, many women are getting shit TV time. This for them is just a culture war issue. He also called the genocide and Gazara a genocide, which is something that it's like.
Yeah, I enjoyed the line about where we're just killing kids with bombs.
Yeah, yeah, I think that he didn't mince his words about it. When asked by ABC, he said he's following the leader of Israeli scholars on genocide on this issue. So yeah, Like it's remarkably easy, right to build a coalition right now of people who are fucking mad And a lot of people voted for Donald Trump because they were sick of this same smami bullshit. Some of them
are to vote Johnald Trump because a hateful, terrible, fucking people. Right, just to be super clear, Yeah, but like it's so easy, and yet it seems to be evading, Like you say, the presumptive nominee that this guy who for for nearly a decade. We have assumed we'll run in twenty twenty eight, and I guess I know. Fuck Gavin Newsom. I hope that he does not succeed with his presidential campaign missions.
Yep, all right, well that's yeah, most of what I got to say about that son of a bit.
Yep, me too.
Let's roll out, Bye bye.
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts. Where you listened to podcasts, you can now find sources for it Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions.
Thanks for listening.