The combination of the artificiality and their sudden desire to champion beautiful, rich white people like Governor Gavin Newsom at least partially for being beautiful, rich, and white seems at odds with their decades long obsession with people of color and fear of the white savior complex
There’s no doubt that California Governor Gavin Newsom is having a moment after stumbling earlier this year with his response to the Los Angeles wildfires and fading from view following his outrage flavor of the week status when President Trump ordered the National Guard to his state to quell riots. According to a recent poll by Echelon Insights, the Governor has climbed into second place in the admittedly early 2028 Democrat primary race with thirteen percent support following only Vice President Kamala Harris at 26. While this might not sound like much, it represents a nine point improvement over April when he was in sixth place with only four percent of the vote. If anything, Governor Newsom is even more on fire on social media, where his office has taken to imitating President Trump’s bombastic style in something halfway between satire and flattery. Over the past several weeks, the official state X account has been awash with downright Trumpian musings such as, “DONALD (TINY HANDS), HAS WRITTEN HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY THIS MORNING — UNFORTUNATELY (LOW IQ) HE SPELLED IT WRONG — ‘BETA.’ SOON YOU WILL BE A ‘FIRED’ BETA BECAUSE OF MY PERFECT, ‘BEAUTIFUL MAPS.’ THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GCN.” He’s retweeted AI-generated photos of him on Mount Rushmore, taken repeated aim at Vice President JD Vance including manipulated photos and this doozy, “NOT EVEN JD ‘JUST DANCE’ VANCE 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 — OUR NATION’S FAVORITE — WILL SAVE AMERICA ONCE.” He proceeded to mock Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and even openly attacked journalists he disagreed with. “BIRD-BRAIN TREY GALLAGHER (A SO-CALLED FOX ‘NEWS’ HOST THAT NOBODY HAS EVER HEARD OF) SAYS MY POSTS ARE ‘CHILDISH’ AND ‘UNBECOMING’ OF A LEADER — CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? MANY ARE SAYING FOX (‘EDIT THE TAPES’) NEWS SHOULD CANCEL HIS PATHETIC LITTLE ‘BEDTIME SHOW’ IMMEDIATELY. THEY ARE CALLING IT THE MOST BORING PROGRAM IN CABLE HISTORY. TOTAL SNOOZE FEST! SAD!!! —” and “DANA ‘DING DONG’ PERINO (NEVER HEARD OF HER UNTIL TODAY!) IS MELTING DOWN BECAUSE OF ME, GAVIN C. NEWSOM! FOX HATES THAT I AM AMERICA’S MOST FAVORITE GOVERNOR (‘RATINGS KING’) SAVING AMERICA — WHILE TRUMP CAN’T EVEN CONQUER THE ‘BIG’ STAIRS ON AIR FORCE ONE ANYMORE!!! TRUMP HAS ‘LOST HIS STEP’ AND FOX IS LOSING IT BECAUSE WHEN I TYPE, AMERICA NOW WINS!!! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER. — GCN.” From there, he proceeded to post photoshopped images suggesting last year’s assassination attempt on President Donald Trump was staged, including a photo of himself holding a bottle of ketchup at the scene, feeding a bizarre conspiracy theory that a man, Corey Comperatore, sacrificed his life for the cause on national television.
Despite ten years of caterwauling about how President Trump conducts himself on social media, Democrats and progressives have generally swooned in response to the Governor hiring two interns to battle on his behalf. Igor Bobic of the Huffington Post declared that “Gavin Newsom Is Talking Like Trump — And It’s Infuriating The Right,” calling the effort a “pitch-perfect parody.” While acknowledging that critics had previously responded to President Trump using social media to hurl “invectives” and share “conspiracies once considered unthinkable for an American president” by “normalizing the bizarre posts,” he continued to claim that “Newsom’s team is trying a different approach — one that’s earned the governor praise from the Democratic base and lots of eyeballs.” The Governor himself defended his actions by bizarrely insisting that President Trump’s unique style has somehow gone without scrutiny or notice for the past ten years, down to the same normalization concerns, making one wonder where he’s been. “If you’ve got issues with what I’m putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns about what he’s putting out as president,” he said at a press conference. “To the extent it’s gotten some attention, I’m pleased. But I think the deeper question is, how have we allowed the normalization of his tweets over the course of the last many years to go without similar scrutiny and notice?” Mr. Bobic managed to recruit an anti-Trump Republican “strategist,” Sarah Longwell who found a way to blame Republicans themselves, claiming not that the Governor’s tweets are ridiculous because they are faked and force imitations worthy of mockery, or because they spread obviously disgusting conspiracy theories, but because “he’s holding up a mirror to what you tolerate on behalf of partisanship. It jolts people out of their passive acceptance of how insane Trump sounds.” The Daily Mail similarly claimed “California Gov. Gavin Newsom is being celebrated by leaderless Democrats after adopting Donald Trump’s unique social media style to mock the president” and the “crude-Trumpian all-caps language… invoked celebration from Democrats who have been leaderless and searching for a fighter following their 2024 election drubbing.” They continued to cite various social media users thrilled that the Democrats finally have a third rate knock off of the real thing, a real thing they are said to loathe. “Love him or hate him, you’ve got to admit he’s the fiercest fighter right now,” insisted @ML3democrats in a tweet that received over 57,000 likes. “He terrifies Trump.” “Gavin Newsom is so good at this,’ exclaimed Majid M. Padellan to his 1.3 million followers. Democratic activist Brian Krassenstein lavished the Governor with the same praise, claiming, “Holy CRAP. Gavin Newsom is good at this game!” Harry Sisson commented, “HA: Gavin Newsom just announced, in a way MAGA will understand, that California is moving forward with redrawing their maps after Trump failed to meet the deadline to stand down. Go for it, Newsom!” Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times was equally effusive, “These @CAgovernor Newsom tweets are delicious mimics of the Trump style. I think satire and mockery are more effective than denunciation, so well done, @GovPressOffice!”
Shortly afterward, pictures began circulating on social media of the Governor in high school and with his family in the present. It seems the Governor himself began this trend by attempting to mock Vice President Vance with the retweet of a side by side photo of the two in high school, where the future Vice President appears awkward and overweight compared to the slick, polished future Governor and would-be President complete with a scarf, something he called out by saying “I miss that scarf.” Shortly afterwards, additional photos of Governor Newsom in a baseball uniform, another suit, and lounging in casual wear surfaced. Though he frequently appeared like he was auditioning for the role of a Cobra Kai extra in the original Karate Kid, progressives once again swooned. “Young Gavin Newsom being this handsome is crazy,” gushed giggly, a Harvard grad and application developer. Bm2squared took to Instagram to claim “With all these high school photos re-surfacing of Gavin Newsom, it has me ready to make them into posters to hang on my bedroom wall. Sorry, Big E.,” presumably her husband or her boyfriend. Photos also began to appear of Governor Newsom and his wife lounging on the floor of a said-to-be $9 million mansion, and additional photos of the couple with their extraordinarily white and blonde children. Once again, social media exploded with praise. “No golden toilets. No foreign business deals. No felony records. No orange hair or skin dye. No corrupt memecoin. No sexual assault allegations. No infidelity. Just a wholesome American family. The Newsoms,” claimed one user. “Governor Gavin Newsom & his family. Aren’t they [a] beautiful family?” added another. “This is Gavin Newsom and his family. AMERICA IS BACK” yet another. When a photo surfaced of the Governor offering his son a French fry at a restaurant, one user took it as an opportunity to mock Vice President Vance and his family for eating sitting down in India, where his wife’s family is from, “Gavin Newsom eating with his family vs JD Vance eating with his family,” they wrote. While I do not think anyone would deny that Governor Newsom has a fine looking family, it does seem surprising that progressives would suddenly latch on to purebred white man who was a child of privilege with a purebred white family that lives a life of privilege to the point where they felt it appropriate to take a shot at Vice President Vance, who grew up as a member of the underclass they claim to care so much about, only to marry a woman of color, who they also claim to care so much about, and have mixed race children, who they also claim to care so much about. As one conservative commentator put it after the collective outrage of Sydney Sweeney’s good genes ad campaign, why are they embracing these same white, purebred genes barely a week later?
While I am not averse to progressives having a little fun during some of their darkest days in recent memory, the combination of the artificiality and their sudden desire to champion beautiful, rich white people at least partially for being beautiful, rich, and white seems at odds with their decades long obsession with people of color and fear of the white savior complex. These days, even movies based on classic works of modern literature are roundly criticized when a white person swoops in to uplift the disadvantage, and yet that’s exactly what they are embracing as we speak. That the purported white savior is receiving this attention and acclaim for imitating the admittedly unusual and abrasive style of a man they purport to hate with a passion certainly doesn’t help either, much less actively spreading the most despicable of conspiracy theories. Otherwise, I am not the first to note that the entire thing has the feel of Vice President Kamala Harris’ “brat summer” when the joy and vibes the media carried on about for months turned out to be entirely fake, especially knowing that this is fake, produced by two interns rather than the man himself. Should Governor Newsom somehow maintain this momentum past next week, there are more than three years before the first primary votes will be cast, and a white man in a party that is skeptical at best and hates them at worst isn’t likely to pass unnoticed as other candidates, perhaps the former Vice President herself, look to stake out their own electoral ground by reclaiming the minority status advantage and promptly targeting the Governor for being too rich and too white. In that regard, the punch lines practically write themselves.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 