California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) criticised Fox News and his own party for failing to be “normal” while speaking at The New York Times’ Dealbook Conference in New York City. At the Summit, Newsom, on Wednesday, said Democrats must embrace the mainstream after spending the year examining why they suffered steep losses in 2024. He urged his party to temper its approach and broaden its appeal beyond core constituencies. “We have to be more culturally normal,” Newsom said. “We have to be a little less judgmental.” Newsom has long championed California’s role as a cultural and economic vanguard, celebrating its diversity and its expansive rights for immigrants and LGBTQ people. He now appears to be positioning himself as a potential 2028 presidential candidate who must appeal well beyond his home state.Host Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Newsom about his social media team’s attempt to mimic President Donald Trump’s posting style in recent months. The governor said he approved it because he needed to “wake everybody up” to the “normalization of deviancy” and accused Fox News of being a prime offender, likening it to the Soviet Union’s propaganda outlet. “You got Pravda, the primetime lineup at Fox, just going on and on [in defence of Trump],” Newsom said. “[He] called someone the ‘R word’ or piggy, and somehow it’s just ‘Trump being Trump.’“Nothing normal about this. He’s a man-child. It’s unbecoming to the president of the United States.” He also condemned the president’s use of an AI-generated image showing him in the Pope’s garb and his proposal to add his face to Mount Rushmore. A portion of the Dealbook audience applauded that complaint. Newsom currently tops many early polls for the 2028 Democratic nomination. Asked by Andrew Ross Sorkin, DealBook’s founder, about the buzz around his front-runner status, he said he was “humbled” but not evaluating a bid for the presidency “to the degree that you think.” His ascent in the polls coincided with a big-money campaign that allowed California to draw new congressional maps favouring Democrats in response to a Republican gerrymander that President Trump sought in Texas. Newsom said the effort was “about being accountable, not just rhetorically, but substantively, to address what Donald Trump is trying to do to this country. He’s trying to wreck this country.”
