Warum der Governeur Kalifornies jetzt rechte Politiker und Influencer in einem Video-Podcast interviewt
Newsom began considering hosting a political podcast after the election. He was alarmed by viral charts showing podcasts with a rightward tilt were far outpacing podcasts that were coded as “blue.” So the governor started discussing with iHeartMedia what it would look like to launch a political show of his own.
Newsom told Semafor the goal of the podcast was to better understand why Democrats lost in 2024, demonstrate humility, and “soften the edges of the world that we’re living in, political world, to try to distill a better sense of well-being.”
“It’s just exploring the other side. Why are they kicking our ass?” Newsom said. “Why are these guys so successful? They are. I mean, I’m sorry, Democrats, they are.”
He continued: ”[Conservatives] feel like we talk down to them, that we talk past them,” he said. “It’s the elitism of being so f**king judgmental and being so quick to dismiss people. So what I’m trying to do is acknowledge that criticism. I feel that sometimes, too.”
Some audiences are clearly there for the spectacle. Clips of Newsom’s first episode with Kirk garnered 42 million views on TikTok alone, according to his staff, as well as nearly a million on YouTube. A person familiar with Newsom’s social media stats also told Semafor that compared to his average posts, the audience for the podcast clips have been reaching more men on social media. As of Sunday, Newsom had more than 57,000 YouTube subscribers.
But he’s also discovered that media that promotes understanding of political opponents isn’t exactly popular on the left right now. This Is Gavin Newsom has not been well-received among many Democrats. Left-leaning media outlets have ripped the governor for making the first guests on his show right-wing stars like Kirk and Steve Bannon, and failing to push back against them on various GOP talking points. During an appearance on the podcast earlier this month, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz asked Newsom why he was spending his time chatting it up with conservative pundits.
“These are bad guys, though. These are bad guys,” Walz said. “How do we push some of those guys back under a rock?”
While the governor said that while he felt a lot of critics hadn’t listened to the full episodes, he understood why left-leaning viewers were upset that he didn’t push back harder. He argued that the point of the show was not to debate Republicans; he’d already done that with DeSantis and Fox News host Sean Hannity.
“This was not a debate format, because you get that everywhere else. I don’t add value in that respect,” he said. “I want to have the kind of conversations that I have with these people in private where I’m like, ’You seriously think that’s true? Yeah. Why do you really do that? What the hell are you guys doing? Why are you kicking our ass in this? How did you just win by 2.3 million votes? Man, did that really work? Do you really believe this?”
He continued: “But I get it, you know, if Steve Bannon says, ‘Gavin, I know you disagree with me on the election.’ And instead of me saying, ‘Yes, I do, and now let’s have a conversation about was the election fake,’ which I’ve been talking about for four years — that they’re full of s**t — I let that go, because everyone knows we disagree. But not everybody knows we agree on the oligarchy. We agree on corporate monopolies. We agree on corporate tax cut policy. We agree that Donald Trump’s not doing anything that they promoted him to be doing. I mean that, to me, is a hell of a lot more interesting than, ‘Oh, Steve Bannon is the January 6th guy who said some insensitive things.’ So while I want to improve, I want to iterate, I want to acknowledge the critics. I’m not necessarily agreeing with them.”
“I’m not trying to own the conservatives like these guys try to own the libs. I’m not trying to go in and kick their ass and get a viral moment. I’m not trying to be that guy. I’m deeply mindful, that’s what most of these guys do for a living. I’m not trying to go viral. I’m not trying to break news. I’m not trying to break people’s hearts in my base. I know that I [diverged] from some ideological purity test, which I’ve always verged from all my career. … But I’m just trying to open up a space to have civil dialogues and, to the extent we break down barriers, that’s more important to me.”
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