In a telling 2023 interview, California Governor Gavin Newsom was asked how he ended up in a leadership role. His answer — a paraphrase of George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant — spoke volumes: “I put a mask on and my face grew into it.” The quote, meant to sound profound, came off more like an accidental confession. Rather than projecting depth, it echoed one of the most common criticisms of Newsom: that he is inauthentic — a man more comfortable in calculations than convictions.
Born into privilege as the son of a judge and a long-time beneficiary of the Getty family’s patronage, Newsom has long operated with the polish of someone bred for politics. But now, amid rising concerns about Democrats’ growing disconnect with young men, Newsom is trying on a new persona — that of the gun-loving, cursing, locker room-adjacent centrist.
The rebrand was debuted in full during his four-hour appearance on The Shawn Ryan Show, a podcast hosted by a retired Navy SEAL and popular with conservative-leaning young men. The episode began with Ryan gifting Newsom a handgun — an ironic gesture given Newsom’s record of championing some of the strictest gun laws in the country. Rather than balk, Newsom leaned in, praising shooting sports and bragging about his marksmanship.
Throughout the episode, Newsom sprinkled in expletives, called Ryan “brother” and “man” with the frequency of a CrossFit instructor, and name dropped celebrities like Marshawn Lynch. He even claimed that a baseball scholarship was his ticket into college — contradicting his earlier admission that family connections paved the way. For the record, there’s no documented evidence he ever played baseball at the college level.
To anyone vaguely familiar with Newsom’s background, this likely read not as relatability, but as a performance — a product of consultants and demographic polling rather than genuine transformation.
The strategy is obvious. Polling shows that since 2020, men aged 18–29 have shifted 30 points to the right. Democratic operatives are deeply alarmed by the erosion of male support, and Newsom clearly sees an opportunity for himself — knowing that if he can bridge the gap with young men, he could lay the groundwork for a 2028 presidential bid. But his approach seems to miss the very element that draws many young men to figures like Donald Trump or Joe Rogan: authenticity.
Newsom notably tried to buy his way into the Rogan orbit and failed, publicly complaining that Rogan won’t have him on his show. In his own right, he’s launched his own podcast, inviting right-wing guests like Charlie Kirk, and posting memes and edgy jokes from his official press account. Like island tribes building fake airstrips to attract cargo planes, Newsom is replicating the symbols of the “manosphere” without embodying the substance.
Even his own worldview seems tailored to the media environment he’s chasing. “It’s style now. It’s narrative. It’s not facts,” he told Ryan. “It’s who can dominate the conversation, man. Flood the zone.”
Which brings us back to Orwell. In Shooting an Elephant, the line about the mask and the face growing into it isn’t about finding oneself — it’s about losing oneself. It’s about becoming so entrenched in performance that you forget what’s real. That is the risk Gavin Newsom runs today.
He wants to be the Democrat who can win back disaffected men. But so far, all he’s proven is that he knows how to imitate what works — not truly embrace it. And in the end, no amount of bro-speak, podcasting, or secondhand swagger can substitute sincerity.
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Once a JA, always a JA. JA Grewsom will never change. Classic example, he said it’s unfair for men to be in women’s sports, then allows Cali. schools to keep doing it, taking records and championships from women. Absolutely pathetic. If anybody votes for him for anything, in Cali. or Nationally, they should go to Alligator Alcatraz too, and then be deported for being a threat to the US, hopefully to El Salvador. Nice prison.