Gavin Newsom: Awesome now, lousy for ‘28 | Will Bunch Newsletter

If there was ever a year for lowered expectations, it’s been 2025. So fittingly, my summer vacation spurned Greece or Italy for a Phillies game, the new Spike Lee joint, beer and pizza with friends, and a quick jaunt to the Hudson Valley to check in on my mom. For me, it was like April in Paris. Now, back to the resistance.

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Sometimes I wonder why artificial intelligence, or AI, is getting so much hype these days — considering that leaders of the Democratic Party have been talking like robots for decades, honing a large language model of losing politics in which every Republican power grab is “a distraction” from “kitchen-table issues” that bore voters to death.

It’s hard to imagine the new, and widely panned, ChatGPT-5 model from OpenAI spewing out words as lifeless as the House majority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, when he was asked on TV last weekend about the likelihood that the Donald Trump regime will send the National Guard and maybe the military into Chicago, with crime as a pretext.

“We should continue to support local law enforcement and not simply allow Donald Trump to play games with the lives of the American people as part of his effort to manufacture a crisis and create a distraction because he’s deeply unpopular,” Jeffries told CNN.

Again, with “the distraction” — when this is actually the essence of his fascist rule. But making sure voters know that Democrats support the thin blue line of cops as much as Republicans do matters a lot more than calling out dictatorship. It’s little wonder that voter approval of the Democratic Party is at or near all-time lows.

It’s been said that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And so it was that California Gov. Gavin Newsom finally raised one eyelid and saw what his party’s rank-and-file base has been begging for since last November.

When we caught up with Newsom back in March, just six weeks into the Trump 47 presidency, the slicked-back Californian had decided that ambitious Democrats (and few, if any, are more ambitious than Newsom) needed to take a sharp right turn to have any prayer of winning the White House in 2028. He shocked the more liberal Democratic base by launching a podcast that hosted right-wing extremists like Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk, where he backtracked on some transgender rights. At the time, I quoted the never-Trump lawyer George Conway, who said, “We need (an Alexi) Navalny, not a Newsom.

Five months later, Newsom — having looked at Trump’s poll numbers and listened to the shouts and murmurs of the Democratic base — is channeling the spirit of the late Russian democracy fighter. And he’s done so by putting a little meat on the bones of resistance to American dictatorship.

When Texas Republicans quickly fell in line behind Trump’s demand for a mid-decade redistricting that could give the GOP as many as five new U.S. House seats, Newsom sprung into action in ways that seemed remarkable for a party that normally reacts like a Galapagos tortoise. Despite some legal and political hurdles, Newsom quickly put America’s largest state — and a strongly Democratic one — on track for its own redistricting that could cancel out Texas’ efforts.

In doing so, Newsom showed a real understanding of the grave threat that America now faces. “Democracy is under assault before our eyes,” the governor said in June, after Trump sent troops into Los Angeles to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. “This moment we have feared has arrived.”

And then it started getting wild. This summer, Team Newsom has openly mocked the 47th president, mimicking his over-the-top, all-caps social media posts and even launching bizarre AI memes, including one where Newsom is being prayed over by conservative icons Kid Rock, Tucker Carlson, and the late Hulk Hogan. Many liberals — especially those of the MSNBC-watching variety — have rejoiced. Finally, somebody — anybody — was fighting Trump in the litter-strewn alley where he dwells.

Newsom even got under the skin of conservative media. “Stop it with the Twitter thing,” Fox News host Dana Perino ranted. “I don’t know where his wife is. If I were his wife I would say, ‘You are making a fool of yourself, stop it.’”

This longtime Newsom critic agrees the governor is finally doing a great thing. Just this week, we’ve seen other top Democrats take the torch, including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (“President Bone Spurs will do anything to get out of walking”), Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (“May his fat ankles find peace today”), and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (“Your remarks about this effort [sending troops to Chicago] have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties”). Mocking Trump is suddenly super viral.

That has made Newsom the man America needs right now: a fighter. In a couple of years, though, the nation will be picking a leader. Those two things aren’t exactly the same.

The California governor has shown the world that he can practice politics as a performance art with the best of them, meaning Trump. But his wild gyrations from March to August also reveal a man in search of a moral compass — or perhaps lacking one altogether.

Newsom’s anti-Trump awakening has not extended to his boosterish and, to my mind, alarming support for Silicon Valley billionaires in their drive to foist artificial intelligence on the American people. The governor — who vetoed much-needed regulations on AI in 2024 — took time out from his redistricting drive to promote a measure pumping AI into California classrooms, when a real leader would tread lightly with a technology that may do more harm than good.

His bromance with Silicon Valley should be a reminder of the wider elite-Democrat courting of the oligarchy that turned off too many voters when his fellow Californian, Kamala Harris, was the nominee in 2024. And, yes, the worst people you know will probably be shouting in 2028 that Newsom didn’t do enough on homelessness or affordable housing — but this time the worst people will actually have a point.

Arguably worse, Newsom’s anti-Trump pivot hasn’t reversed his wrong turn on transgender rights that too often sees him sounding like a Republican. Just recently, the governor went on a right-wing podcast, the Shawn Ryan Show, and made a number of remarks that deeply troubled the transgender community, even endorsing a conservative talking point that maybe there should be a 25-year-old age minimum for transitioning. To paraphrase the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., disrespect for human rights anywhere is disrespect for human rights everywhere.

If Democrats truly want to win in 2028, they should embrace Newsom’s example of how to punch back against Trump, thank him for his service, and then pick a nominee who actually has some new ideas. As Zohran Mamdani recently showed in New York City, voters are craving affordability — a hard sell for the leader of one of America’s most expensive states.

It’s quite possible that someday historians will see Newsom as a kind of a John the Baptist figure, pointing his party toward a path out of the political wilderness. But someone else must play the role of savior.

Question: Are there enough guardrails to keep these [Trump executive orders] from being enacted? — Michelle says: Be kind. Always. (‪@snarkysillysad.bsky.social‬) on Bluesky

Answer: You’re right, Michelle, in noting that the president is running amok with signing executive orders lately — and in trying to rule America by dictate he’s doing little to tamp down the notion that he’s becoming, well, a dictator. Increasingly, these executive orders either unconstitutionally usurp powers that belong to states or localities (attempting to ban cashless bail, or mail-in voting) or just have no legal basis whatsoever. One recent move to outlaw flag burning and set a minimum jail penalty not only contradicts free-speech rulings by the Supreme Court, but also grabs the lawmaking powers that belong only to Congress. There seems to be little doubt that a judge will strike down this order, and presumably some of the other blatantly unconstitutional ones. Whether Trump defies the judiciary — and transitions into total unfettered autocracy — is the $64,000 question for the survival of American democracy.

The Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, which was 10 days ago but seems like it was 10 years ago, inspired a diverse array of opinions, but most tended to agree that the Russian leader cannot be trusted and anything less than rock-solid support for Ukraine and its embattled leader Volodymyr Zelensky amounts to a betrayal. “Only NATO boots on the ground will stop Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and push him back to the pre-invasion borders, including Crimea,” wrote Jay Beckerman. “Anything less is not just wishful thinking, but a guarantee that superior Russian numbers eventually will totally overrun Ukraine.” Added Laura Conwesser: “As much as everyone wants to see the killing and destruction come to an end, giving Putin any concessions will only lead to his future attempts at Russian expansion, as soon as he recovers from the damage done to the Russian economy and population.”

📮 This week’s question: I shared my opinion of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and now I’d love to hear yours. Is he the Democrat you’d like to see win the 2028 nomination, or would you prefer someone else? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “Gavin Newsom” in the subject line.

You’ve probably noticed there’s a lot of stuff happening right now, even in a late-August week when most of the civilized world is supposed to be on vacation. There’s the Trump regime’s scheme to send the initially wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda, and the possibility of sending troops into Chicago. But that’s not what was topping the Drudge Report, which has thrived for nearly three decades by favoring the news that readers crave over the news some editor thinks they need. On Monday, Drudge led with, “WHAT IS GOING ON? — and a blown-up photo of Donald Trump’s bruised right hand.

We don’t know the exact reason for the bruise, or for similar pictures the day before that showed an unusual bulge on the same hand. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt couldn’t pretend the bruise didn’t exist, but she claimed absurdly it was because the president shakes too many hands. Yet that doesn’t explain the thickness of Trump’s ankles — often a marker of poor heart circulation — or his uneven gait. That’s all on top of a series of rambling and sometimes bizarre public statements by the commander-in-chief. Trump’s annual physical exams — which consistently portray him as a near-perfect picture of health, despite weight and height numbers that never seem to add up — are just about the only official information released to the public. That leaves a huge void that the online posters and faraway doctors are filling with rampant speculation.

An Indiana forensic pathologist with a large social media following, Darin Wolfe, wrote a Drudge-featured essay on Substack suggesting that Trump’s apparent symptoms, such as the bruises and ankle swelling, could be signs of congestive heart failure. But as I wrote this Tuesday morning, his essay had mysteriously disappeared. Indeed, after watching how my own father died this March at age 88 from congestive heart failure, the president’s public condition looks eerily familiar. But as a journalist, I’m wary of going too far with just speculation — especially around something as complicated as a medical diagnosis. The only thing we can say with 100% certainty is that we don’t know what’s happening with Trump’s health — and that is a major problem.

It’s more than ironic that these concerns about the 79-year-old Trump — the oldest person to ever win a U.S. presidential election, in 2024 — come just a year after declining health forced his predecessor, Joe Biden, to drop out of that race. That’s because American voters want a leader who’s at the top of his game when he’s alone in a limo with Vladimir Putin, or deciding whether to bomb Iran... or invade Chicago. For nearly a decade, there have been serious, legitimate questions about the veracity of Trump’s health bulletins — even about some of his physicians such as Ronny Jackson, who was later dinged for other misconduct while White House physician. Such doubts are inevitable when voters reelect a president who lied or misled more than 30,000 times in his first term, about nearly everything else.

Leaders in Congress, and elsewhere, should come out publicly and demand that Trump be examined by an independent physician not beholden to the White House, and that the full results and prognosis are released to the American people, sooner rather than later. It’s hard to imagine the increasingly dictatorial Trump would agree to this demand, at least right now. But the citizens of this still nominally democratic nation deserve to know “WHAT IS GOING ON?”

Once or twice a year this feature just doesn’t quite work. It seems that Aug. 26 is a date I’m often on vacation, and I might as well have been the couple of times I did try to write something. So I’ll have to cheat. Today is the fourth anniversary of a national tragedy: the bomb attack during the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal that killed 13 U.S. service members. Last year, I wrote — after the fact — about the third anniversary, when then-candidate Donald Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery and his team allegedly shoved a female employee who tried to stop Trump from filming there against the rules. I wrote: “In fact, we’ve become so used to the deeply ingrained sexism of Trump’s movement that the unvarnished scorn for women that comes across yet again in the Arlington fracas has received little attention.” It still does. Read the rest: “The ugly truth we’re missing on Trump, Arlington.”

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