Gavin Newsom has devised a new strategy to energize Democrats and infuriate Republicans, said Matt K. Lewis in the Los Angeles Times: Act like President Trump. In recent weeks, his social media accounts have shared posts that parody the kind of material that normally fills up Trump supporters’ feeds. There’s AI-generated images of Newsom with a cup labeled “MAGA tears”; Newsom on Mount Rushmore; and “my personal favorite,” Newsom getting prayed over by Kid Rock, Tucker Carlson, and an angelic Hulk Hogan. The Democrat has adopted Trump’s all-caps writing style as well, posting that his redistricting plan to counter the Texas GOP’s gerrymander has led “MANY” people to call him “GAVIN CHRISTOPHER ‘COLUMBUS’ NEWSOM (BECAUSE OF THE MAPS!)” He taunts the president on X with Trumpish insults (“DONALD IS FINISHED—HE IS NO LONGER ‘HOT’”) and is selling merch too, including a red baseball cap emblazoned with “Newsom was right about everything!” For years, Trump was the master of this “childish, if devious, game.” Now Newsom, who’s eyeing the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, is hitting back and “fighting on Trump’s turf.” 

After eight years of Democrats issuing “shrill ultimatums about the death of the republic,” it’s nice to have someone telling Trump to shove it “in the only language he could ever understand,” said Luke Winkie in Slate. Newsom isn’t the most likable guy, but he’s giving his party a taste of what has “made Trumpism so appetizing” for many Americans: “the mean-spiritedness, the compulsive name-calling, the prioritization of emotional truth over objective truth.” Against my better judgment, I’m enjoying Newsom’s embrace of “idiocracy,” said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch. He’s holding a mirror up to MAGA, and MAGA doesn’t like what it sees. Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher blasted Newsom’s posts as “childish,” while his colleague Dana Perino said Newsom will need to be “more serious” if he wants to be president. So there you have it: “All it takes to expose stupid, unacceptable rhetoric as stupid and unacceptable is to change the identity of the speaker.” 

Newsom is putting his presidential ambitions above his state’s well-being, said Jim Geraghty in National Review. California has the highest unemployment rate in the U.S., an affordability crisis, and growing levels of homelessness. The state needs “all the help it can get,” yet Newsom “has decided his best strategy is to antagonize the president as much as possible.” His zingers may play well online, said Salena Zito in the Washington Examiner, but they won’t resonate with real swing-state voters. Newsom and his advisers, holed up in their Democratic stronghold, have never had to “win over Republicans, independents, or centrist Democrats.” Those folks don’t want a Democratic Trump; they want their candidates “showing up, ‘getting shit done,’ and governing.” 

But voters are rewarding Newsom for putting “himself at the center of the fight,” said Douglas E. Schoen in The Hill. While former Vice President Kamala Harris still leads in an aggregate poll of Democratic 2028 contenders, Newsom has doubled his vote share nationwide since June. That may be because, amid all the Trump trolling, he’s moderated on a “long list of polarizing issues,” said Ronald Brownstein in Bloomberg. Newsom has expressed opposition to transgender girls playing in school sports, and “struck hard-line notes on crime.” He’s showing it’s possible to be a Democrat who’s anti-MAGA without being ultra-progressive. Other Democrats would be smart to adopt Newsom’s “confrontational centrism.”