A Tale of Two Governors: Confronting Versus Dick-wagging

https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/09/02/a-tale-of-two-governors-confronting-versus-dick-wagging/

In a column on an imagined split in the Democratic party over the word “distraction,” Ron Brownstein linked to this Molly Jong Fast interview with Gavin Newsom in support of his argument that Newsom was criticizing a focus on affordability.

In a recent interview with podcaster Molly Jong-Fast, Newsom implicitly criticized the instinct of other Democratic leaders to pivot back to economic issues whenever possible.

But Brownstein was misrepresenting the jist of the conversation with Newsom and Jong-Fast, and in so doing, wildly misunderstanding Newsom’s pivot. He’s not alone in missing the point. Brownstein’s column is among many from pundits who belatedly discovered Newsom’s trolling but wildly misunderstand it to be exclusively about a willingness to directly confront Trump.

The primary focus of Jong-Fast’s interview with Newsom was about him breaking through the news cycle. From the very start, she dated his breakthrough to two weeks earlier (so around August 9), while he described the shift in his messaging strategy first to Trump and Elon Musk’s disinformation during the fires,

Those first few days they were winning the messaging battle.

But as Newsom described, his state of mind changed when Trump invaded Los Angeles, back when I first profiled his trolling efforts.

And my state of mind radically changed at that moment. And our media shift [sic] changed. Our research, our clarity, the conditions changed, so we had to change. And we were no longer apologetic about things. I wasn’t trying to play nice.

And I know a lot of good people play nice. Talk about what you really focused on every day. And people will pay attention to your ten point plan on affordability. And talk about kitchen table issues. Well we’ve been doing that every damn day for years and years and years, with all due respect.

And that doesn’t get picked up. And then we’re chasing lies and misrepresentations and untruths.

And so about a few weeks ago, as it relates to redistricting, we decided yeah, we’re going to punch him back, and we’re going to put a mirror up to the absurdity that is Donald Trump.

Newsom’s comment was not about content — that ten point plan (indeed, he went on to lay out policies he dubbed progressive later in the interview).

It was about attention. That ten point plan “doesn’t get picked up,” which leaves you “chasing lies and misrepresentations and untruths.”

*snip*