Gavin Newsom Trades Steve Bannon Interviews for Provocative Left-Wing Critique of Trump | Vanity Fair

Gavin Newsom may not have fallen out of a coconut tree, but the current California governor and likely presidential campaign hopeful appears to be following in former vice president Kamala Harris’s footsteps in other ways. Namely, Newsom appears to have taken on the mantle of Democratic Party troll-in-chief, using memes and shareable content across social media to mock and pick fights with Donald Trump.

Harris, during her abbreviated presidential run, used social media to expand her reach, finding particular success on platforms like TikTok and with her rapid response X (formerly Twitter) handle, @kamalahq. Through original memes and trending sound, as well as zeitgeisty moments like Charli XCX’s “brat summer” vibe, the Harris campaign found a sweet spot that connected to audiences and memorably conveyed the campaign’s messaging. Newsom, now, is delighting commenters on both his personal and official TikTok pages with posts featuring memes from Hamilton urging California to “rise up,” a fact-check of past Trump statements about states’ rights that the president is now contradicting set to a techno soundtrack that also calls him a liar, and another taunting Trump about his own social media missives set to evergreen Trump foe Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down.”

And that’s just in the past few days.

Newsom, whose office did not respond to Vanity Fair’s request for comment, clearly paid close attention to the messaging strategy supercharged during the 2024 election cycle: His office still, for example, published the press release version of that fact-check TikTok on his official site, but the commenter who threw an “OMG SLAYYYY” on the TikTok is likely not heading to Newsom’s site’s newsroom vertical to read up, nor is the one who wrote “It feel illegal to be this early.” Others openly wonder if Harris’ media team found a professional home with another Californian, this one a 6’3” white guy. (The Democratic National Committee actually scooped many of them up earlier this year. Alex Brase, not a Harris alum, is listed as a Newsom digital staffer.)

As Newsom seizes an organic moment in the political spotlight, literally daring Trump to arrest him amidst the protests rocking Los Angeles and standing against an actual army, he’s also pulling from Team Trump’s own media strategy as well: He recently launched a podcast, a tool that the MAGA faithful used to connect especially with young male voters. Results in that arena have been mixed, so far: Newsom committed to speaking with guests from both sides of the aisle, but has since learned that trying to buddy up to folks like Steve Bannon is not going to make him any friends (including Steve Bannon), nor delight would-be constituents.

Whether memes will ultimately matter in the next election remains to be seen, but in these very early stages, as Democrats continue to dissect what went wrong and what tools are worth keeping around, it’s certainly worth a follow.

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