California Governor Gavin Newsom has admitted that he will consider running for the White House after the 2026 midterm elections.
“I’m looking forward to who presents themselves in 2028 and who meets that moment, and that’s the question to the American people,” Newsom told CBS’s Robert Costa in an exclusive interview on CBS Sunday Morning.
After Costa asked the 58-year-old governor if he was going to give “serious thought” to a presidential run after the midterm elections, Newsom replied, “Yeah, I’d be lying otherwise. I’d just be lying, and I can’t do that.”
The California governor will step down from his position in January 2027 after serving his constitutionally mandated two terms. He has traveled to battleground states, including a July trip to South Carolina taped by CBS, where Newsom met with state Democratic leaders and stopped by a coffee shop to rally activists.
“I think the biggest challenge for anyone who runs for any office is people see right through you, if you don’t have that why,” Newsom said about his potential presidential run.
Newsom’s openness to running for president comes in the same week that former Vice President Kamala Harris, 61, told the BBC that she is “not done” when asked about a possible future run in the next presidential election.
Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, the California governor has been an avid critic of the president, frequently trolling him with AI-generated videos on social media and commenting on Trump’s Truth Social posts, calling him a “man child.”
The man child in the Oval got his feelings hurt, so he is punishing the American people with higher costs. pic.twitter.com/VmAdfOEMY7
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) October 25, 2025
On Friday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it would send election monitors to California for the Nov. 4 vote on Proposition 50, which would allow for redistricting that could help California Democrats gain more House seats.
“This is about voter intimidation. This is about voter suppression. Period, full stop,” Newsom commented on the DOJ’s decision in a video shared to social media.
In Sunday’s interview, Newsom said that the proposition “is about our democracy,” arguing that the Trump presidency “as we know it” would be “de facto” over if Democrats win control of the House in the 2026 midterm elections.
“If you have a Speaker [Mike] Johnson, we may have a third term of President Trump, I really believe that,” Newsom told Costa. The governor was echoing a claim that former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon made in an interview with The Economist on Thursday. Trump, 79, also posted a provocative AI-generated video on Truth Social, suggesting a desire for a presidency extending far beyond the standard two terms.
Shortly before the taping of CBS’s Thursday interview with Newsom, Trump called off his plans to deploy the National Guard to California as part of his crime crackdown in Democrat-run cities.
“He’s an invasive species for the country, for the world,” Newsom said about the president in Sunday’s interview.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on Newsom’s remarks, but received no immediate response.
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