Gavin Newsom's new, bad podcast

Gavin Newsom’s New Podcast Is Bad And Dumb

I’ll admit, I am not super familiar with Gov. Gavin Newsom because I try my very best to never go to California or know anything about what goes on there. But X user @Srirachachau described Newsom back in November as, “a rat bastard” and that “the only thing he hates more than homeless people are Republicans.” X user @hausofdecline has called Newsom “some sort or lesser demon cast out of hell for hubris.” And X user @Seagull_Comics called him “an evil psychopathic demon who feeds on the blood of Republicans.” All of which sound right to me.

So to say I’ve been a bit confused by his new podcast is an understatement. The show has had three guests so far, misshapen conservative jack-o'-lantern Charlie Kirk, right-wing radio host Michael Savage, and, as of this morning, Steve Bannon. And not only are the interviews, just on a substance level, very bad, they’re completely toothless.

I’ve seen A LOT of folks, primarily on Bluesky, shrieking about how the very idea of Newsom interviewing someone like Kirk or Bannon is bad. This was a argument you saw a lot during the first Trump administration, that “platforming” these people was, inherently, dangerous. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don’t. If you’re looking for a good argument as to why it’s not ok, at all, I think this thread makes some good points. But I also just think it depends, man. I once attended a BBC conference in Edinburgh where Steve Bannon was the headline speaker and I watched him run circles around the interviewer. But I also know many reporters that have interviewed terrible right-wing nut jobs over the years and came back with valuable insights. Journalism! Some folks are better at it than others. Who knew.

And I do, actually, in theory, think hijacking the conservative video landscape with a podcast is a clever idea. There is a world where a wildly aggressive Democratic leader produces a podcast that tears apart conservatives and feeds it back into right-leaning video platforms. We know that right-wing digital media thrives off cross-pollination. Tim Pool has Milo Yiannopoulos on his show, Yiannopoulos has Ben Shapiro on his, Ben Shapiro interviews President Donald Trump, etc. So using those same personalities to catch YouTube’s unthinking recommendation engine is smart. In fact, you could argue that’s very close to what The Majority Report’s Sam Seder did this week. And it worked! Not only have clips of Seder been completely unavoidable on platforms like Instagram, X, and TikTok, but the video, itself, has been watched 3 million times on YouTube in barely 48 hours. But that’s not what Newsom is doing. There is no demon energy here. Just a smarmy tan scarecrow trying find common ground with guys who will not think twice about throwing him in a gulag when they take over the country. A perfect example of what I’ve been calling the Democrats’ “we don’t have Coke, just Pepsi” strategy, where they are trying to sell conservative voters a lesser version of the thing they want. Also, my god, how stupid can you be to film a podcast full of YouTube celebrities and not put it on YouTube???

Or, as writer Kylie Cheung wrote on Bluesky, “Hi, I'm the voter who now supports Gavin Newsom because he invited neo-Nazi Steve Bannon on his podcast. I wasn't quite sold on him having neo-Nazi Charlie Kirk on because I dislike the shape of Mr. Kirk's head. But I just needed him to befriend not one, but two nazis, so now I’m in.”

But Newsom isn’t the only Democrat that struggling to comunicate. None of the Democrats’ top leadership seem to understand that right now, both because of the constitutional crisis we’re in and, also, because of what the internet has done to mass media, the most important thing you can do is speak clearly, confidently, and, most importantly, fiercely. For instance, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer needed 176 words in his X post just to say that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) illegally detaining pro-Palestine and legal resident Mahmoud Khalil was bad. Thankfully, the official X account for the Senate Judiciary Democrats went with a nice and simple, “Free Mahmoud Khalil,” even if people are losing their minds over it in the replies. Here’s maybe a hot take, but it would be bad if ICE illegally detained anyone, even Steve Bannon. Hope that helps. (Though it would be funny.)

But it’s not all doom and gloom and it’s important to point out the good stuff while you’re trashing all the bad. Zohran Mamdani is a New York State Assembly member, who is currently running for Mayor of New York City. He likes Citi Bikes and wants to make them cheaper, so he’s got my vote. This morning he went up to Albany and unloaded at Border Czar Tom Homan at a hearing over Khalil’s illegal arrest, screaming at Homan in the hallway. It makes for good content. But it was also passionate, focused, and appropriately aggressive. Maybe Newsom’s team could call him up and ask for a few pointers.

A Typical Text From Gurp, My Goblin Lover

America’s Final Form: The Car Dealership

The entire Republican Party is currently running defense for Tesla right now. Probably because the company’s stock has been in free fall all month. Though President Donald Trump’s endorsement yesterday did help things.

Trump’s Tesla press conference was a surreal and disgusting bit of graft and corruption, but it, unfortunately, produced one of the best sound bites of Trump’s whole career. So who’s to say if it was bad really. As podcast host Akilah Hughes wrote, “The used car salesman president. Oh my god. I’m so embarrassed! This is so embarrassing!” And, yes, Trump was literally reading off a sales pitch, completely with prices.

Trump also took a moment to threaten a new executive order that would classify any vandalism or damage done to Tesla dealerships as domestic terrorism. Which is an absurd and outrageous abuse of power and, I would imagine, a perfect target for Democrats to go after. Rep. Ro Khanna, however, has asked all Democrats to condemn violence and vandalism of Teslas. Oh well.

Bluesky user @niedermeyer.online wrote yesterday, “The authoritarianism is bad, but the loser energy is absolutely intolerable.” Which connects nicely to piece over in Slate by writer Luke Winkie, who wrote about the defining feature of Trumpism: Everyone’s a massive fucking loser. And I guess they all drive Teslas now.

Bluesky Goes To SXSW

—by Adam Bumas

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber was the keynote speaker on Monday at this year’s SXSW in Austin. She appeared wearing a parody version of Mark Zuckerberg’s custom streetwear. And, to be fair, it is better to wear a sweatshirt with a Latin phrase about destroying autocracies than one saying it’s cool you’re an autocrat. Graber’s read, “a world without Caesars” in Latin, while Zuckerberg’s read, “Either Caesar or nothing.” But putting it that way shows the problem here. Embarrassing displays by billionaire oligarchs aren’t a battle that can be won by fighting fire with fire. Making fun of them only goes so far.

Luckily, Graber and Bluesky have non-clothing-based plans to shore up their efforts against corporatized social media. She announced the Bluesky team is considering strategies to limit how the site can be scraped for AI training (another success story for 404 Media), and marked her talk with an update allowing for three-minute videos on the platform. Which means, now, Bluesky can host old and new masterworks, from “breaking bad type beat” to “three minutes of uninterrupted dog petting”.

ChatGPT Has A Creative Writing Mode Now For Some Reason

Sam Altman announced this week that ChatGPT is working on a new model specifically for writing fiction. First off, no normal, not awful person would ever want this or need this. Second, not to get too high-minded here, if you remove the human being from fiction, there is simply no point to it, at all. And, third, the example Altman provided sucks shit.

If you want one good example of how bad ChatGPT is at writing creative fiction without out having to click over and read the whole thing, here’s one line that will tell you all you need to know: “She lost him on a Thursday—that liminal day that tastes of almost-Friday—and ever since, the tokens of her sentences dragged like loose threads.”

Relatedly, Tony Gilroy, showrunner and screenwriter behind Andor, was going to release the show’s scripts publicly so fans to could read them, but ultimately backtracked. He has since revealed that he didn’t put them online because he didn’t want them scanned by an AI model. “Why help the fucking robots any more than you can,” he told Collider.

Shempposting Is So Hot Right Now

—by Adam Bumas

This video from yesterday was the biggest example of a wave of content celebrating the 130th birthday of Shemp from The Three Stooges. The algorithm seems to have picked it up thanks to this X post from last month by user @pissvortex, who was responding to the official Three Stooges X account. The account, which appears to be run by Curly’s grandson (@grandstooge), posted a collage of all six performers who were part of the Stooges, asking “Which Stooge would be your Valentine? And why?”

The engagement bait has been taken — it seems a lot of people didn’t know the Three Stooges had a total of six rotating members. Now, it’s gotten popular enough to break into real life. Cameron Fetter, who made the video above, will be hosting an event called “Shemptopia” next Sunday in Ridgewood, Queens, which is to Bushwick what Bushwick was to Williamsburg in 2011.

A Good Post About Octopuses

Some Stray Links

• “Here’s How Gen Z and Gen Alpha Are Actually Using ChatGPT in Schools”

• “Trump official tasked with defending DOGE cuts posted fashion influencer videos from her office”

• “AO3 is entering a new era”

P.S. here’s a powerful audiovisual experience. (TikTok keeps muting it, but here’s a mirror.)

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***