{"id":12458,"date":"2025-08-20T10:16:40","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T10:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/how-gavin-newsom-trolled-his-way-to-the-top-of-social-media\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T10:16:40","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T10:16:40","slug":"how-gavin-newsom-trolled-his-way-to-the-top-of-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/how-gavin-newsom-trolled-his-way-to-the-top-of-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"How Gavin Newsom trolled his way to the top of social media"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With an inescapable, smashmouth, all-caps-laden and meme-filled X account, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is holding a mirror up to MAGA \u2014 and MAGA doesn\u2019t like what it sees.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s Newsom on Mount Rushmore<\/u><\/a>. There\u2019s Newsom getting prayed over<\/u><\/a> by Tucker Carlson, Kid Rock and an angelic, winged Hulk Hogan. There\u2019s Newsom posting in all caps<\/u><\/a>, saying his mid-cycle redistricting proposal has led \u201cMANY\u201d people to call him \u201cGAVIN CHRISTOPHER \u2018COLUMBUS\u2019 NEWSOM (BECAUSE OF THE MAPS!). THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.\u201d<\/p>\n

If this genre of social media post provokes deja vu, there’s a good reason for that.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s trying to mimic President Trump,\u201d MAGA vanguard Steve Bannon tells Blue Light News. \u201cHe\u2019s no Trump, but if you look at the Democratic Party, he’s at least getting up there, and he’s trying to imitate a Trumpian vision of fighting, right? He looks like the only person in the Democratic Party who is organizing a fight that they feel they can win.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a decade, President Donald Trump has blazed trails online. And now, Newsom has found that by replicating Trump\u2019s posts to the point of outright parody and trolling, he\u2019s effectively gamed social media algorithms and colonized X\u2019s typically right-coded \u201cfor you\u201d tab.<\/p>\n

In doing so, Newsom is not only getting on Republicans\u2019 nerves, but also potentially redefining how Democrats function as the opposition party in the age of Trump.<\/p>\n

Michelle Obama famously advised Democrats to live by a dictum: \u201cWhen they go low, we go high.\u201d Newsom has approached it a bit differently: When they go low, we go low, and \u2014 backed by lots of AI-generated slop \u2014 end up high in the algorithm.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019ve changed,\u201d Newsom told Fox LA when asked about his new media approach in an interview that posted overnight<\/u><\/a>. \u201cThe facts have changed; we [Democrats] need to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s MAGA-flavored posts have birthed an organic outburst of user-generated memes \u2014 not dissimilar to the dynamic Trump has inspired (and from which he has drawn over the years in posts on his @realDonaldTrump accounts). There\u2019s Newsom riding a raptor into battle<\/u><\/a>, a tattered Old Glory rippling in the wind behind him. There\u2019s Newsom riding a different dinosaur while shirtless and sporting an eight-pack of abs<\/u><\/a>, raising pistols in the air. (Newsom\u2019s office tells Blue Light News they don\u2019t use AI to generate written content, though lean on it to create visuals.)<\/p>\n

Newsom \u201cisn\u2019t just trolling MAGA; he\u2019s proving to Democrats that stepping off your digital high horse and entering the fray is both messy and worth it,\u201d says Stefan Smith, a digital strategist who was online engagement director on Pete Buttigieg\u2019s 2020 campaign. \u201cThe man was political roadkill a few months ago but, with a shift in strategy, he\u2019s become a cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre of the Resistance 2.0. No doubt the rest of the 2028 shadow primary entrants are taking notes.\u201d<\/p>\n

In some ways, it\u2019s like peering into the near future of what a post-literate presidential campaign might look like. (In case you have trouble imagining who might occupy such a race, look no further than the side-by-side post<\/u><\/a> of Newsom and fellow meme lord Vice President JD Vance, which has been seen on X at least 54 million times.)<\/p>\n

\u201cNewsom has entered the digital dojo, and he\u2019s performing the sort of memetic jujitsu that\u2019s scaring Republican white belts unused to actual competition,\u201d Smith tells Blue Light News. \u201cFor too long, Democrats have been posted up in the parking lot, too afraid of getting it wrong to throw a jab. This should energize folks to get into the octagon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Voices on the right are noticing, too. \u201cIf I were his wife, I would say you are making a fool of yourself,\u201d Fox News\u2019 Dana Perino<\/u><\/a> said, speaking of Newsom\u2019s antics on X. \u201cHe’s got a big job as governor of California, but if he wants an even bigger job, he has to be a little more serious.\u201d<\/p>\n

In private, staffers in Newsom\u2019s press office smiled. Perino said nothing about the leader of the free world\u2019s own social posting \u2014 the very thing Newsom is emulating.<\/p>\n

\u201cALMOST A WEEK IN AND THEY STILL DON’T GET IT,\u201d the account responded<\/u><\/a>. The next morning, \u201cGovernor Newsom Press Office\u201d again flickered to life<\/u><\/a>. \u201cFOX IS LOSING IT BECAUSE WHEN I TYPE, AMERICA NOW WINS!!!\u201d<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s press office says that Trump has used all-caps less in his own posts of late. White House communications director Steven Cheung is posting<\/u><\/a> about the account, and recently said that Newsom is a \u201ccoward and Beta Cuck<\/u><\/a>\u201d for not fielding questions at a press conference. (He was, in fact, as a livestreamed video showed.) Newsom\u2019s press office shot back<\/u><\/a>: \u201cSteven Cheung (incompetent Trump staffer) doesn\u2019t know how to use his computer. SAD!\u201d White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson called Newsom\u2019s posts \u201cweird and not at all funny<\/u><\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s staff count these critiques as wins. In their minds, the Trump aides are, in an indirect way, critiquing their own boss when attacking Newsom\u2019s tactics.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope it\u2019s a wake-up call for the president of the United States,\u201d the California governor said recently<\/u><\/a>, breaking character when asked about his X posts. \u201cI\u2019m sort of following his example. If you\u2019ve got issues with what I\u2019m putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns about what he\u2019s putting out as president. \u2026 I think the deeper question is how have we allowed the normalization of his tweets, Truth Social posts over the course of the last many years, to go without similar scrutiny and notice?\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked for a comment, the White House sent Blue Light News an original meme, referencing a famous scene from the show \u201cMad Men.\u201d<\/u><\/a> (It is, to our knowledge, the first official White House press statement delivered exclusively in meme form.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Added Abigail Jackson: \u201cThank you for your attention to this matter!\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cGovernor Newsom Press Office\u201d<\/u><\/a> account has humble origins. The handle, @GovPressOffice, was created by aides to Jerry Brown \u2014 a man more given to Zen Buddhism than the fever swamps of the internet \u2014 and belongs to the California governor\u2019s office. Because of that, just as Brown\u2019s aides passed it off<\/u><\/a> to Newsom in January 2019, Newsom will hand it off to his successor in January 2027; he won\u2019t be able to take what he built with him when his term ends.<\/p>\n

And what his team has built is substantial. As of this writing, the \u201cGovernor Newsom Press Office\u201d<\/u><\/a> account has 408,000 followers on X. Since the beginning of August, it has gained more than 250,000 followers and earned more than 225 million impressions, according to Newsom\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

Though some online observers speculated that Newsom digital director Camille Zapata primarily steers the effort, Blue Light News has learned that the account is helmed by a team of four or five people \u2014 a sort of “brain rot” trust that includes Newsom communications director Izzy Gardon and rapid response director Brandon Richards. Newsom\u2019s office declined to describe the governor\u2019s level of involvement, but told Blue Light News that he leads the effort.<\/p>\n

No other prospective 2028 candidate \u2014 Democrat or Republican \u2014 is breaking through in the online attention economy like Newsom. And it\u2019s not just his press<\/i> office\u2019s account: His campaign X account tops 2.4 million followers. On his campaign accounts alone, since 2025 began, Newsom has gained 2.96 million followers across TikTok, Instagram, X and Substack. All of that has earned him a billion-plus views and impressions, his team tells Blue Light News.<\/p>\n

Still, AI slop and dinosaur memes don\u2019t vote in Democratic primaries. But Democrats who are way<\/i> more offline \u2014 and who hail from far beyond the Golden State \u2014 are also noticing Newsom.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard a lot of people say how happy they are to see a Democrat fighting back,\u201d says Jim Demers, a former New Hampshire state representative and member of Stand Up New Hampshire, a group organizing town halls in the early primary state. \u201cThere\u2019s this feeling that Democrats are not fighting hard enough, and he’s showing the fight people are looking for.”<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople in the MAGA movement and the America First movement should start paying attention to this, because it\u2019s not going to go away,\u201d Bannon tells Blue Light News. \u201cThey\u2019re only going to get more intense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like this content? Consider signing up for Blue Light News’s <\/i>Playbook newsletter<\/i><\/a>. <\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With an inescapable, smashmouth, all-caps-laden and meme-filled X account, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is holding a mirror up to MAGA \u2014 and MAGA doesn\u2019t like what it sees. There\u2019s Newsom on Mount Rushmore. There\u2019s Newsom getting prayed over by Tucker Carlson, Kid Rock and an angelic, winged Hulk Hogan. There\u2019s Newsom posting in all caps, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}