YGBFKM: Gutless Gavin Hides ‘First Amendment’ Speech Behind Copyright Claims to Shut Down Critics

Perhaps my Javert analogy treated Gavin Newsom too kindly. This smells more like a Hunger Games/Panem setup, in which the ridiculously baroque elites strut on stage but fear the people so much that they arrange death matches on the streets to distract the peasantry. In fact, that may be uncomfortably on the nose, given the violence on the streets that Newsom ignores and Karen Bass encouraged. May the odds be ever in your favor, combatants!

Last night, Newsom delivered an overwrought appeal to his California subjects — er, constituents, nominally anyway — defending the First Amendment and the right to burn Waymos in the street and attack federal agents. At one point, Newsom declared that Donald Trump demanded “silence,” emphases mine:

This moment we all need to stand up and be held to account, a higher level of accountability. If you exercise your First Amendment rights, please, please do it peacefully. I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear, but I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence to be complicit in this moment. Do not give in to him. 

First Amendment, eh? Silence, Newsom says? Eeeenteresting, because Newsom doesn’t want to put his money where his own mouth is on either point. Newsom published this speech through his podcasting platform rather than make it public as part of his part-time job as California’s governor. 

When  my friend and Townhall colleague Larry O’Connor attempted to use clips of Newsom’s speech this morning, he got shut down by Newsom’s podcast publisher with copyright-infringement claims on YouTube:

🚨NEW — Governor Gavin Newsom is issuing YouTube copyright claims through his “This is Gavin Newsom” podcast on his incendiary address to California during violent riots.

Conservative video creators like @LarryOConnor who are critical of Gavin Newsom’s words are being punished. pic.twitter.com/IY65Z4QtvX

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 12, 2025

Ahem. In the first place, even podcast material is subject to fair use, especially for the purpose of political analysis and criticism. YouTube has a nasty habit of rewarding infringement trolls who use these claims to shut down criticisms, especially conservative critiques. The platform faces some real challenges when it comes to plagiarism and copyright infringement, so their response is somewhat understandable. However, rather than just double-check to ensure that the material constitutes fair use, they take the easy route by suspending the video on any complaint and make the original producer carry the burden of proving that it doesn’t violate copyrights. That makes it nearly impossible to maintain political conversations of any meaning or substance.

Newsom and his team must know this, and it’s almost certainly why they put an official address out on the podcast platform. They want to strangle any criticism that uses Newsom’s likeness or voice, the better to deny what was said or claim it was taken out of context. Plus, any conservatives that do make fair use of the video will end up having their channels demonitized by YouTube through repeated copyright claims. That’s no coincidence. 

Finally, this is an utterly corrupt move by both Newsom and iHeart Media, which publishes Newsom’s podcast. Newsom gave that speech as a function of being governor, not a commentator on a podcast. He advocated for his official policies in office, and furthermore, arguably did so in the context of a political campaign against Donald Trump. That speech should have no expectations of copyright protection at all. 

This also raises serious questions about the ability of politicians to hide themselves from criticism by declaring themselves “podcasters.” If Newsom and iHeart Media get away with this, every politician across the spectrum will deliver speeches as podcasts and strangle criticism of the content through specious ownership claims. It will create a rhetorical Panem, placing elected and appointed officials beyond the reach of any political accountability, and gut the First Amendment that Gutless Gavin claims to champion. 

Addendum: How was the rest of the speech? Incompetent, writes Ben Shapiro:

Thus, on Tuesday night, Newsom delivered another one of his very overwrought, ridiculous speeches. I think he thought it was the end of the film “Independence Day” and he was Bill Pullman shouting, “We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive!”

It didn’t go well.

It started with massive audio issues right at the top. You could see he was talking, but nothing came out, which was an improvement because when he talks and sound does come out, it’s usually stupid.

He finally got to his point, which was: We must resist! We must resist federal encroachments!

Federal agents enforcing federal law is not an “encroachment,” unless your name is either Orval Faubus or George Wallace.