Just a few months ago, the X account run by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office was pushing out anodyne content that was barely noticed in the social media landscape.
It touted Mr. Newsom’s effort to improve vocational education in California. It announced that a new steel mill was breaking ground. It assured Californians that the state was preparing for incoming winter storms.
It was official, routine and easily overlooked. In other words, as President Trump might say, SAD!
No more. Last week, the account morphed into a Democratic imitation of Mr. Trump’s Truth Social musings, hyping Mr. Newsom as “AMERICA’S MOST FAVORITE GOVERNOR.”
Dismissive nicknames, grandstanding boasts and long, winding tangents ARE WRITTEN IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. They are peppered with an inordinate number of exclamation points!!!
Perhaps most strikingly, the posts have been written in a scathing tone and at times have been intentionally offensive.
Plenty of social media accounts have tried to emulate President Trump’s voice for laughs. Only one belongs to a sitting governor.
Mr. Newsom, a potential presidential candidate in 2028, believes his account is holding up a mirror to President Trump, who regularly calls the governor “Newscum.” He and his supporters see his social media posts as highlighting the ridiculous nature of the president’s bombastic, bare-knuckles, grammar-flexible communications.
“It’s following his example,” Mr. Newsom explained at a recent news conference. “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.”
Mr. Newsom has said that Democrats need to better understand the MAGA movement if they want to win back voters. He has made a point of including right-wing social media accounts and stations like Fox News and Newsmax in his media diet.
He was particularly disturbed by the way misinformation spread during the Los Angeles wildfires in January, a spokesman said. Social media posts falsely claimed the Hollywood sign was on fire and that the inferno was started by a satanic ritual. The governor’s staff began using their social media accounts to rebut false claims, but those barely made a dent.
When Mr. Trump sent National Guard troops into Los Angeles in June, Mr. Newsom’s office realized that traditional responses were not going to be enough, said Izzy Gardon, the governor’s director of communications.
That month, Mr. Newsom and his press office began directly attacking conservative critics, often in caustic tones. Many took notice when they began using Star Wars memes.
But Mr. Newsom’s office didn’t truly flip the script until last week, when it mimicked Mr. Trump’s Truth Social style for the first time as the battle over redistricting heated up.
“DONALD TRUMP, IF YOU DO NOT STAND DOWN, WE WILL BE FORCED TO LEAD AN EFFORT TO REDRAW THE MAPS IN CA TO OFFSET THE RIGGING OF MAPS IN RED STATES,” began the post on the morning of Aug. 11.
It ended like so many of Mr. Trump’s posts do: “THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!”
It was intended as a one-time joke, according to his office, but the response was overwhelming compared with previous posts. The governor’s communications team — four core members and a couple of others who chime in — decided to keep going.
They soon began signing off with Mr. Newsom’s three initials, “GCN,” mimicking Mr. Trump’s “DJT.” That touch was the idea of the governor, whose middle name is Christopher.
The team has also mimicked Mr. Trump’s fondness for posting images of himself created by artificial intelligence. Mr. Newsom’s team has reposted an A.I. image showing the governor’s head carved into Mount Rushmore and another of himself standing heroically in front of the Golden Gate Bridge with fireworks going off to celebrate California having the fourth largest economy in the world.
Abigail Jackson, a spokeswoman for the White House, wrote in an email, “Nothing about Newscum is authentic — from his rehearsed answers to his flip-flopping policy positions — he goes whatever way the wind blows.”
“It makes sense that he would try to mimic the President’s wildly successful communication strategy,” she added. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but Gavin’s behavior is just getting weird at this point.”
Kara Swisher, a longtime tech journalist and podcaster who has known Mr. Newsom since he was the mayor of San Francisco, said the posts reflect a cutting tone the governor uses in private conversation. (Ms. Swisher was a contributing opinion writer and podcast host for The Times until 2022.) She has been texting him about her favorite posts — like those calling Mr. Trump “TINY HANDS” — and said they reflect an understanding that the internet demands a relentless, over-the-top voice to break through.
“The question is, does it matter, or is it just funny?” Ms. Swisher said in an interview. “Does he want to be a podcaster, or does he want to be president? And is this what it now takes to be president?”
The press office has been reluctant to explain who is writing the posts, attributing them to a team of Newsom aides who offer ideas each day.
“The governor has tasked us with communicating more effectively, so we’re doing it,” Mr. Gardon said. If it’s a really good post, “you can credit the governor. If it flops, blame the clueless intern.”
Mr. Newsom’s approach bears similarities to The Onion, the satirical newspaper, and The Colbert Report, the former Comedy Central show in which the comedian Stephen Colbert played a conservative talk show host. The absurdity of Mr. Colbert’s caricature inherently mocked those on the right.
It can be folly to directly counter Mr. Newsom’s posts with serious critiques. When conservatives do, Mr. Newsom and his supporters are happy to point out that they have allowed President Trump to set this tone for the past decade.
The governor’s team said it would continue the approach as long as people keep laughing. So far, there seems to be no sign of waning interest. The account now has about 430,000 followers, which the governor’s team said was 250,000 more than it had Aug. 1.
The following of the press office account has grown higher than the followings of the main accounts of other Democratic governors, including J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Kathy Hochul of New York. (Mr. Newsom’s main account on X, @GavinNewsom, has 2.4 million followers. The president’s X account boasts 108 million. )
Mr. Newsom’s posts are perhaps grabbing so much attention because they stand out from the rest of the Democratic Party’s ineffective approach of playing it safe and proceeding as if it’s business as usual, said Sarah Roberts, the director of the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“It’s certainly over the top, but we’re in over-the-top times, aren’t we?” she said. “Many people who feel disenfranchised at this moment have taken some solace in seeing what one might describe as fighting fire with fire.”
The governor’s new voice on X has generated a flurry of criticism from conservative commentators. Some have accused him of being so childish and unfunny that they say he has disqualified himself from running for president.
“Let’s go ahead and cross him off the list of Democrats to keep an eye on,” the conservative commentator Tomi Lahren said on her podcast. “He’s embarrassed himself to such a degree on social media.”
Harmeet Dhillon, who serves as assistant attorney general for civil rights under President Trump, said the governor’s posts have a fatal flaw: They are not funny.
“I’m all for appreciating crass humor,” she said. “I love ‘South Park.’ It’s hilarious. But don’t just be a loser copying the most powerful person in the world’s style.”
Heather Knight is a reporter in San Francisco, leading The Times’s coverage of the Bay Area and Northern California.
Laurel Rosenhall is a Sacramento-based reporter covering California politics and government for The Times.
The post Gavin Newsom’s Latest Role: Social Media Troll appeared first on New York Times.
