Newsom: ‘The Democratic Brand is Toxic Right Now’

Gov. Gavin Newsom continues to make news by pushing back on the far left of his own party. In a conversation last night with Bill Maher, he said a few things which are likely to rile up the extremists on his own team.

First up, he made the case for talking to people on the other side of the aisle. “These guys are crushing us,” Newsom said. He continued, “The Democratic brand is toxic right now. We had a high water mark two weeks ago, that was a CNN poll at 29% favorability. It’s dropped in an NBC poll down to 27%.”

But the real highlight of this clip comes at the end. “This notion of cancel culture…that’s real and Democrats need to own up to that,” Newsom said. Some people won’t remember but going back to 2014 we spent years arguing this point. There was a cottage industry in the left-wing media of authors downplaying cancel culture and claiming it was just a few isolated instances which the right was blowing out of proportion. No one pretends that’s the case now. Having one of the leaders of the Democratic party say so, even if it comes years too late, seems like a bit of progress.

Time to break out of our echo chambers. pic.twitter.com/KKn8zRDLEk

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) March 29, 2025

But all of that was just a setup for Maher’s next question: “What do you say to people who say ‘Well, this sounds all very good but, governor, you were the poster-boy for a lot of this stuff.'” Maher then brought up the California law which allows teachers to hide children’s gender transitions from parents. “That’s the kind of thing…that makes a lot of people go ‘Well, you know what, that’s the party without common sense,'” Maher said.

As you’ll see, Newsom tried to recontextualize that law, saying it just protected teachers from being fired if they didn’t “snitch” to parents. But Maher correctly pushed back, saying that “snitching” to parents doesn’t compute.

After that they turned to trans girls/women competing in female sports and Newsom doubled down on what he said a couple weeks ago to Charlie Kirk. “I can give you example after example. Just in my home state there was someone who won a triple jump by 8 feet,” he said.

Gavin Newsom’s 180 degree turn on trans competing in sports is truly ‘hard to believe’:
Maher: “This all sounds good, but Governor, you were the poster boy for all of this stuff.
California schools cannot be required to notify parents if their kids in school have changed their… pic.twitter.com/wZGrwPD6z8

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) March 29, 2025

There was also an exchange where Maher pointedly challenged Newsom over attempts to make repairs to his own house, specifically his roof. He pointed out that he had to pay for two inspectors to get repairs made after the recent wildfires. Newsom replied by bringing up Ezra Klein’s new book “Abundance” (more on that here) and seemingly endorsing its main critique that Dems are too focused on process and not enough on results.

Bill Maher has been trying to make changes to his roof for ages—but California’s endless red tape keeps getting in the way. Frustrated by the constant bureaucratic hurdles, Maher finally had the chance to confront Governor Gavin Newsom face-to-face and ask why even basic repairs… pic.twitter.com/HT3rJKRaIZ

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) March 29, 2025

All of this sounds reasonable but the problem, as Maher noted, is that this is not what Newsom has been saying for most of his career. Even CNN called him out on this after the Charlie Kirk interview.

After telling me that no one in his office ever used the term Latinx, CNN put together a brutal compilation of Gov. Gavin Newsom personally and repeatedly using the phrase.

If he’ll lie like this, directly to my face, on camera… pic.twitter.com/mx2nskMGhe

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) March 21, 2025

This is the problem with Gavin Newsom trying to become the voice of reason on these issues. He hasn’t been the voice of reason for the past decade. If he really wants to make a change and take his party in a new direction, he needs to start by being honest about his own role in taking it in the wrong direction. 

Newsom could simply state, on his own podcast or some other show, that he has been part of the problem. But until then, he’s not a catalyst for change so much as a guy trying to deceive people about who he is and what he believes.