How Gavin Newsom got under Trump’s skin – with jokes

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It was some time in June that Gavin Newsom, the Democrat governor of California, decided to stop playing the nice guy. He’d already sparred a little with President Donald Trump, notably early in January when Trump had criticised California’s handling of the tragic Los Angeles wildfires. But when protests broke out over immigration raids in June and Trump sent the National Guard to Los Angeles to – supposedly – protect federal property, Newsom shifted up a gear.

“Democracy is under assault before our eyes,” he told the nation in an unusual televised speech that was seen by millions. “The rule of law has increasingly given way to the rule of Don.”

On social media, meanwhile, Newsom has been blatantly parodying Trump’s bizarre signature style, ranting in all-caps and deploying exclamation marks as if they were going out of fashion. (An example from October 6: “DONALD TRUMP IS AN AUTHORITARIAN THUG! HE IS USING THE U.S. MILITARY AS A POLITICAL WEAPON AGAINST AMERICAN CITIZENS.” )

The strategy, Newsom told CBS, is to “put a mirror up to Trump and the absurdity of what’s going on in this country, the absurdity of Donald Trump, the absurdity of these networks [like Fox News] playing into it.”

Attacking Trump has lifted Newsom’s profile from state to national, with invitations to appear on late-night chat shows to hawk his new range of (ironic) Trump-like merchandise. A MAGA-style trucker cap reads, “NEWSOM WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!”

It’s clearly rattled Trump, who’s resorted to calling Newsom “Newscum” and told a press conference: “I know Gavin well. He’s an incompetent guy with a good line of bullshit.” Newsom, in turn, has lampooned Trump as “Dozy Don”, for appearing to nod off during a meeting, and “Marie Antoinette”, for his plans to build a swanky ballroom at the White House during a cost-of-living crisis.

“He knows he’s gotten under Trump’s skin, which is exactly where he wants to be,” says Bruce Wolpe from the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre. “He’s establishing himself as the ‘Critic in Chief’ of Trump.”

Newsom’s strategy has had pundits asking whether he has greater ambitions than simply standing up for the interests of his state and his party. He was tipped as a presidential hopeful in 2024 but overtly declared his loyalty to Joe Biden and, eventually, Kamala Harris.

He’s continued to swat away suggestions he might run in 2028 but if, as they say, a presidential campaign is a marathon not a sprint, he is certainly laying the groundwork. A former schoolboy athlete with a trademark mop of slicked-back hair, still only 58, married to the glamorous actor-director Jennifer Siebel Newsom, he has been likened to a modern-day Kennedy. “He’s got the Hollywood look,” agrees Tim Lynch from the University of Melbourne.

Is he really a contender for the top job? What skeletons are in his closet? Who else is in the mix of the Democrats’ leading lights?

California governor Gavin Christopher Newsom.

Where did Gavin Newsom come from?

In Newsom’s telling, childhood was something of a struggle. He and his younger sister, Hilary, were raised single-handedly by their mother, Tessa, in the San Francisco area after she split with their father, William. Newsom has talked about his mother having to hold down two or three jobs to keep the family afloat, posting on social media that “she worked seven days a week and still managed to be there for me and my sister 24/7”.

He also talks of his dyslexia, which he says was little understood when he was a child – and that his mother apparently didn’t reveal the diagnosis, fearing he would use it as a crutch. To cope, he developed numerous workarounds that he still employs today, including re-reading passages, taking copious notes in the margins of books and having his staff produce summaries of documents that he can better absorb. He has suggested that his condition has even been something of an asset, forcing him to adapt and seek creative solutions to problems.

“Found this pic while going through stuff from storage. My sister Hilary and brother-in-law Geoff on their wedding day ... along with my dad and mom (who is no longer with us).” Geoff, a film director and producer, and Hilary married in 2001. Newsom’s mum died from breast cancer in 2002. His dad passed away in 2018.

What he doesn’t talk about quite so often are the connections he enjoyed through his father. William Newsom III, known as Bill, had grown up in a privileged world where he mingled with peers from several prominent Californian families, including Gordon Getty, fourth child of mega-rich oil baron J. Paul Getty. Gordon and Bill became close friends at school, Gordon sometimes seeking sanctuary at the Newsom residence. “His family became sort of my surrogate family, his father, mother and siblings,” Getty told a lifestyle website in 2009. “Their house was my home away from home.”

Bill went to prestigious Stanford University (a Californian competitor to the Ivy League schools in the east) and became a lawyer. He would later be appointed a judge and, also, a trustee to the Getty family, managing their billion-dollar trusts, a role he once described as “very remunerative”.

Officers escort John Paul Getty III into Rome’s police headquarters after his release from kidnappers in December 1973.

Bill even earned a footnote in a famous historical event, in 1973, as one of the Getty confidantes tasked with delivering ransom money to free the young heir John Paul Getty III after he was kidnapped in Italy. (Famously, J. Paul Getty, the magnate grandfather, initially had refused to pay up, whence the kidnappers cut off the youth’s ear and had it delivered by post, a grisly episode dramatised in the 2017 film All the Money in the World.) In this web of connections, Bill Newsom was also distantly related to Nancy Pelosi, who today remains a close ally of Gavin Newsom. Gavin visited his father often, particularly enjoying time hiking, bird-watching and camping in the woods around Bill’s mountain retreat in Dutch Flat, a historic mining town two hours north-east of San Francisco.

Newsom, centre, flanked by Peter Getty, left, and Billy Getty at the opening party for PlumpJack’s wine shop in 1992.

Nor does it seem school life was always a chore for Gavin. Not to diminish the challenge of his dyslexia, he was tall, gregarious, athletic (playing outfield on the school’s baseball team) and, apparently, popular with his good looks and social graces burnished by the well-heeled crowd he ran with. The Gettys had taken Gavin under their wing, considering him virtually a son. There are reports he accompanied them skiing and on an African safari. He became close friends with his contemporary Billy Getty, son of Gordon and Ann Getty.

‘Everybody wanted to date him ... He was the smartest, the best-looking.’

After briefly dabbling in real estate, in his early 20s Gavin went into business with Billy, backed by Gordon Getty’s wealth. In 1991 they founded a hospitality venture called PlumpJack (named for an opera Billy had penned), which would grow to encompass restaurants, wine shops, wineries and resorts. Tessa would join the enterprise as a bookkeeper; sister Hilary would become group president.

Among its projects, PlumpJack bought and remodelled a venerable San Francisco establishment called the Balboa Cafe, which became something of a hot spot, described by The New York Times in 1998 as “a glittering nexus for Gen-X San Franciscans with social and political connections”.

Newsom was quite the man about town, another prominent San Franciscan, Susie Tompkins Buell, co-founder of clothing brands Esprit and North Face, would later recall. “Everybody wanted to date him ... He was the smartest, the best-looking.”

Gavin Newsom and his father, Bill, do coffee at the Balboa Cafe in San Francisco in 2004.

When did Newsom’s political career kick off?

Why Newsom, who has spoken about how hard he worked to launch PlumpJack – working all hours and storing cases of wine in his living room to get the operation up and running – wanted to add politics to his mix is lost to the fog of history. He has said he was inspired by his father’s civic service and interest in the environment.

One of his first mayoral actions was to issue municipal marriage licences to same-sex couples in defiance of national laws.

In 1995, he volunteered to help out on the San Francisco mayoral campaign of Willie Brown, a larger than life wheeler-dealer who also gave former vice president Kamala Harris, just a couple of years older than Newsom, her start in politics; she went on to become California’s attorney-general. As mayor, Brown appointed Newsom to San Francisco’s Parking and Traffic Commission in 1996 and then to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1997; low-key roles, certainly, but ones which gave him vital experience in the machinations of City Hall.

Newsom as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors at City Hall in 2001.

Flash forward to 2003 and the still-youthful Newsom was now running for mayor of San Francisco, endorsed by such Democratic luminaries as Bill Clinton and Al Gore. At 36, he became the youngest mayor of San Francisco in a century.

One of his first mayoral actions was to issue municipal marriage licences to same-sex couples in defiance of national laws (more than 4000 licences were issued but then declared void by the California Supreme Court; same-sex marriage was, ultimately, declared legal by the US Supreme Court in 2015).

Newsom is sworn in as mayor of San Francisco by his father, Judge William Newsom, in 2004. With them is Gavin’s then wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle.

In 2007, however, his rapid ascent hit its first major speed bump. While in the throes of divorcing his first wife, the television presenter and lawyer Kimberly Guilfoyle, it emerged he had had a brief affair with his appointments secretary, who also happened to be married to his then-campaign manager. It was a juicy national scandal but his career survived after he made a frank admission in a press conference, taking full responsibility: “I want to make it clear that everything you’ve heard and read is true.”

He married again in 2008 to Jennifer Siebel, an actress and film director, with whom he has four children (Montana, Hunter, Brooklynn and Dutch). She is designated California’s “first partner”. Guilfoyle, meanwhile, went on to date Donald Trump Jr: small world.

Newsom briefly considered running for governor of California in 2009 but, facing strong opposition from the popular Jerry Brown, settled to run instead as Brown’s understudy in the largely lame-duck role of lieutenant governor. He had some minor progressive successes, helping to tighten gun controls and to legalise marijuana, but was probably best known during this tenure for designating the avocado as the state’s official fruit (he claims to eat several a week).

This week he banned the sale of Glock pistols and made it easier for high-school students to access further education.

As Brown reached the end of his last possible term (he’d served four; today, California mandates a maximum of two, like the presidency), Newsom ran for governor in 2018 and was elected in a landslide.

His campaign had been helped along the way by significant donations from San Francisco royalty including the Pritzkers, descended from founders of the Hyatt Hotel chain; the Fishers, founders of the Gap clothing brand; and, unsurprisingly, the Getty family.

In 2018, after auditing donations to Newsom’s various campaigns in the lead-up to the election for governor, the Los Angeles Times concluded he was “the product of a selection process in which some of the wealthiest families in the entire country have been involved from his earliest engagement in politics.”

Governor Newsom shakes hands with former mayor Willie Brown in 2019.

As governor, Newsom has passed numerous progressive bills, such as requiring public colleges to offer abortion medications, banning smoking in state parks and on beaches, banning the sale of petrol-powered cars from 2035 and mandating that large retailers can no longer offer customers just “boy” and “girl” sections for toys but must have a “gender-neutral” section too. This week he banned the sale of Glock pistols (a popular brand of handgun) and made it easier for high-school students to access further education.

He has come under criticism for California’s homelessness epidemic, soaring house prices and a particularly sharp cost-of-living crisis. And there was a misstep in 2020 when he dined mask-free at the French Laundry, a high-end restaurant, in defiance of COVID recommendations; it added fuel to a campaign to have him unseated, which he survived.

Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, on stage with their children, wave to supporters on gubernatorial election night in 2018.

What are Newsom’s chances of becoming president?

It’s early days in the 2028 presidential campaign, if one yet exists. But Newsom’s willingness to take on Trump has had many pundits suggesting he has presidential ambitions and has flipped the switch on a shadow campaign.

Until recently, Newsom was seen as keen to mediate between left and right, playing something of a peacemaker. In January, he initially greeted Trump on friendly terms when the president flew out to discuss support after wildfires devastated Los Angeles County, meeting him at the airport and declaring: “We welcome President Trump to California with an open hand.”

Newsom greets Donald and Melania Trump in Los Angeles in January.

Surprisingly for a Democrat, Newsom has also reached out to several right-wing pundits to appear on his podcast, among them Charlie Kirk.

‘Come after me. Arrest me. Let’s just get it over with, tough guy.’

Relations with Trump’s MAGA acolytes deteriorated dramatically, however, in early June when Trump sent the National Guard and 700 Marines into Los Angeles to bolster a federal crackdown on undocumented immigrants. “Border tsar” Tom Homan made the extraordinary threat to have Newsom arrested for defying Trump’s orders. “His primary crime is running for governor because he’s done such a bad job,” said Trump. Newsom responded: “Come after me. Arrest me. Let’s just get it over with, tough guy.”

This level of friction is almost unprecedented, says Natasha Lindstaedt, a professor of government from the University of Essex. “We have rarely had a president getting into fights with governors,” she says. “They usually need to work together and have a strong working relationship.”

Since then, it’s been a war of words that has given Newsom a national profile and, in a political system that, unlike Australia, has no formal leader of the opposition, elevated him to the unofficial role of the Democrats’ head of the resistance. “Democrats are unable to have any impact in Congress,” Dafydd Townley tells us from the University of Portsmouth. “Any resistance comes from the states themselves, and Newsom has assumed that leadership.”

Newsom speaks at an LA high school before signing a series of immigration bills in September. The No Secret Police Act bans most law enforcement, including federal immigration (ICE) agents, from covering their faces while conducting official business.

The timing might suit a presidential run. Newsom’s final term as governor ends in 2027, which would give him clear air to tour the nation and raise the millions he would need in donations to run a successful national campaign.

“On the negative side, he’ll have to push even harder to maintain the press coverage that he’s currently getting,” says Townley. “But at the same time he’ll likely be able to avoid any persistent targeting by Trump, unless the administration believes him to be the major candidate for 2028.”

‘Don’t rule out Michelle Obama being on a ticket somewhere.’

Also in his favour: few, if any, possible rivals have the same name recognition. Perhaps Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Pete Buttigieg, who served in Joe Biden’s cabinet as transportation secretary. Other, lesser-known, hopefuls to be touted include Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer; Illinois governor JB Pritzker; Maryland governor Wes Moore; Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro; and Senator Cory Booker from New Jersey. Meanwhile, “don’t rule out Michelle Obama being on a ticket somewhere,” says Townley. Then there’s Kamala Harris, who has said she won’t run for California governor but hasn’t ruled out another presidential campaign.

Newsom, as the Democratic candidate for governor of California in 2018, with then-senator Kamala Harris (right) and his wife, Jennifer.

Not so much in Newsom’s favour: he’s a white, straight male in a party that might prefer a more diverse candidate; his links to old money might alienate working-class voters. Tim Lynch, who is a professor of American politics, describes him electorally as a “target-rich environment”.

‘I do think he is going to try to run, and has been positioning himself as the person that is best to beat Trump.’

Then there’s the hurdle that liberal California, seen by many Americans as quite separate from the rest of the country, has yet to produce a Democratic president (the one it did chalk up was Ronald Reagan, a Republican).

“It’s very difficult to see how a California Democrat is going to be any more electable than the last one to try, which was Kamala Harris,” says Lynch. “Democrats in California generally represent everything that even mild Trump supporters set themselves against. I don’t think Newsom is the most ‘woke’. But I think the caricature the ordinary middle-of-the-road voters have is that California is an empire of the woke and trans rights and Hollywood leftism.”

Natasha Lindstaedt agrees. “I don’t see him as a viable candidate,” she says, though she adds: “I do think he is going to try to run, and has been positioning himself as the person that is best to beat Trump.”

Former president Bill Clinton with Newsom in New York in September.

Newsom may also hit a roadblock within his own party, says Townley. “The most difficult opposition might be the far left within his own party who might state he’s not liberal enough. Will the left of the party, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, be willing to support him if he doesn’t align with her agenda?” Of note, Newsom believes trans women should not compete in sport with biological women, defying a view widely held on the left. (Trans rights advocates have said they are sickened by his position.)

In the governor’s immediate future is a piece of California legislation that could yet cement him as the Democrat frontrunner. Ahead of next year’s mid-term elections, some Republican states, notably Texas, have been redrawing their congressional district boundaries to win more Republican seats.

‘He can easily raise money. He could catapult to office if he wins this referendum.’

In response, Newsom is holding a ballot next month asking Californians to do the same for Democrats, temporarily changing his state’s districts to deliver his party five more seats in 2028, offsetting their losses in Texas. Nancy Pelosi has been assisting in his campaign to win what is technically known as Proposition 50, or the Election Rigging Response Act.

For Newsom to achieve this would change the political landscape in a meaningful way, says Bruce Wolpe. “If he wins that and California enacts it, that would be a big win for him. He becomes the giant-killer for the Democratic Party.” If Newsom is successful, “he will be the guy who did the most, more than anyone in Congress, to do something to stop Trump. He has all the time. He can easily raise money. He could catapult to office if he wins this referendum.”

And if the ballot fails? “This is a very important election for him,” says Wolpe. “He’s a popular governor. If he can’t persuade his own state to support him on something so important, like the future of the country, why should he be the presidential nominee?

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