Thank you!
Meet the real American president. His name is Gavin Christopher Newsom. He is chief executive of America’s richest, most populous state. And in this peculiar moment, that makes him the real president, by default. Sure, there’s a guy in the White House who calls himself president. But real presidents swear an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. Donald Trump violates the laws and the Constitution constantly. Filling this void, Newsom has effectively assumed the presidency, though the public doesn’t yet understand this. One common complaint is that Newsom is distracted by issues beyond California. Another dig is that he is pursuing future presidential ambitions. But those gripes miss the point. Newsom isn’t running for president; he’s acting like the president, because the country needs someone to behave like a president.
One focus for Newsom is preserving American governing capacity, even as Trump and Elon Musk dismantle U.S. government agencies. For example, is co-chairing a coalition called America Is All In, to pursue environmental policies nationwide, despite the national government’s meltdown. Newsom is also taking a presidential role in the ongoing response to the L.A. fires. In the aftermath of blazes, Trump has ceaselessly played politics, like a petty local political boss.. He is attacking federal emergency response and tying emergency assistance to unrelated state policy demands, like California adopting a voter identification system. Newsom, in response, is touting federal assistance to the state and defending federal agencies that Trump vilifies. In foreign affairs, Newsom trumps the impostor in the White House.
While Trump trashes longstanding American alliances, President Newsom has been building new ones. Amid Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on Mexico, Newsom struck a deal with the governor of the Mexican state of Sonora on climate and economics. America’s real president also made a similar environment-and-economy agreement with 21 Brazilian states. These agreements followed Newsom-signed deals with Canada, New Zealand, Japan, China, Australia, the Netherlands, South Korea, Sweden, and Norway. California now has more real allies than the United States. Let me say here that Newsom would not be my first pick as the de facto U.S. president in this time of crisis. And, because the broken U.S. Constitutional system is beyond rescuing, I often wish that the governor was focused on making California an independent country. But Newsom has instead chosen to stick up for the American system — like a president would. Indeed, when he does take shots at Trump these days, he’s often defending the Constitution in the process.
After Trump and Musk blew up the U.S. Department of Education, Newsom issued a statement: “This overreach needs to be rejected immediately by a co-equal branch of government. Or was Congress eliminated by this executive order, too?” When California won a legal appeal in federal court in a gun control case, Newsom called it a victory for rule of law: “When the executive branch disagrees with a court ruling, the answer isn’t to ignore it — it’s to appeal to a higher court. We did that. We won. That’s how law and order works.” Newsom’s controversial new podcast is of a piece with his defend-the-system presidency.
Democrats have rightfully criticized Newsom for failing to challenge far-right figures who appear as guests. But the gambit makes sense if you’re a president seeking consensus in a polarized country. On the podcast, he isn’t interviewing anyone — he’s presiding, since even MAGA strategists are the real president’s constituents too. Intriguingly, many Trump acolytes see a real threat in Newsom’s podcast. Right-wing journalist Megyn Kelly called for MAGA figures to stay off the podcast. “I don’t like to see it,” Kelly said. “The better he will get, the better he’ll do, the more he’ll understand how to appeal to people who are more right-wing or independently minded but on the right.”
In other words, a real president, seeking to represent the whole country, is a powerful threat to the relentlessly divisive occupier of the White House.
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