{ "archive_path": "archive/1790781321.072802", "base_url": "www.vanityfair.com/story/gavin-newsom-interview", "basename": "gavin-newsom-interview", "bookmarked_date": "2026-09-30 15:15", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/www.vanityfair.com/story/gavin-newsom-interview", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.vanityfair.com", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "www.vanityfair.com/story/gavin-newsom-interview.html" }, "domain": "www.vanityfair.com", "extension": "", "hash": "CBV35GS7QGSX9AXBXVWE", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.vanityfair.com" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-30T16:15:56.419584+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790781321.072802", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-30T16:15:55.873245+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.vanityfair.com/story/gavin-newsom-interview" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-30T16:15:56.814424+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790781321.072802", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-30T16:15:56.426336+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://www.vanityfair.com/story/gavin-newsom-interview" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-09-30T16:16:23.185901+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790781321.072802", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-30T16:16:19.172212+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmpmj5d9mh6", "https://www.vanityfair.com/story/gavin-newsom-interview" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-09-30T16:16:19.158991+00:00", "index_texts": [ "Gavin Newsom, outgoing governor of California and probable candidate for president of the United States, knows what you\u2019re thinking.\u201cSlick,\u201d Newsom ventures when I ask what he assumes people say when his name comes up in 2028 speculation. With his dazzling white teeth, open collar, and hair Brylcreemed to a silver sheen, it\u2019s not a bad guess. I had another association in mind: California itself.MAN IN THE MIDDLE Gavin Newsom arrives at a rally in Houston in 2025.\nAdrees Latif/Reuters\u201cGod, how lucky am I?\u201d he replies, reflexively.Answers may vary.This summer I went to meet Newsom and found him in a sunbaked shopping plaza near downtown Las Vegas. He\u2019d just wrapped up the last state budget of his eight-year term in office, leaving California with billions more in debt than when he arrived, and was visiting Nevada\u2014a swing state, and the second, after South Carolina, on the Democratic primary calendar for 2028\u2014to rally local Democrats and support a gubernatorial candidate named Aaron Ford. A handful of protesters stood in the parking lot, in 107-degree heat, flapping handmade posters that read \u201cWe Can\u2019t A-\u2018Ford\u2019 California.\u201dNewsom has been prepping for ever-higher office since he ran for mayor of San Francisco 23 years ago. But California remains the quintessential liberal hellscape of the national imagination and perhaps Newsom\u2019s biggest impediment to any White House designs: nation-leading poverty and income inequality, and that pervasive and widespread homelessness you read about.\u201cI get all that,\u201d Newsom counters. \u201cLook, there\u2019s a whole industry that\u2019s been created to attack our state, and it\u2019s pretty ironic. We\u2019re the tentpole of the US economy. Think about where Donald Trump would be today if he didn\u2019t have California. It\u2019s the only thing holding up GDP growth.\u201dNewsom calls it \u201cCalifornia derangement syndrome,\u201d his spin on the MAGA attack line for Trump haters. He giddily machine-guns facts and quasi-facts about California and his governance thereof: the first major decline in people sleeping on the streets in nearly two decades, a 59 percent jump in housing construction (his housing number has since come under scrutiny for excluding major areas like San Diego), a $25 minimum wage for health care workers (federal minimum wage is $7.25). And did you know California is home to more Nobel laureates than anywhere else in the country?When we met, Newsom was taking a victory lap after the passage of Proposition 50, which could flip five congressional seats in California in a tit-for-tat response to newly drawn seats in Texas meant to tilt the midterms in favor of the GOP. It was a controversial move, a sign of Newsom\u2019s willingness to get down in the mud and beat Republicans at their own game. Democrats thrilled to it, giving Newsom a shiny trophy to campaign on.While he spoke to Nevada canvassers, somebody yelled out \u201cPresident!\u201d and Newsom did a sheepish cut-the-mic gesture at his neck, signaling he wasn\u2019t ready to go there. Oh, but he is. Submitting himself to a Vanity Fair interview, under fluorescent lights in an empty back room of a local ministry, he comes off as loose and playful, dodging and parrying like a political athlete, part salesman, part jocular bro, with just enough comic self-deprecation to make the whole souffl\u00e9 rise. Earlier, when he was presented with a baseball jersey by local pols, Newsom pretended to unbutton and remove his shirt for a quick change, saying, \u201cI\u2019ve been working out,\u201d inspiring squeals and wolf whistles.GETTY SET GO With Peter and Billy Getty in 1992.\nSan Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers/Getty ImagesBut the more immediate and pressing question before Newsom\u2014before he ever has a chance to try explaining California to middle America\u2014is whether his charms can tame a restive and dyspeptic Democratic Party currently besotted with democratic socialists. The political progeny of Bernie Sanders are gaining ground from New York to Michigan on promises of burning the billionaire class to the ground, eager to cast the likes of Newsom as not only the avatar of California\u2019s gross income inequality, but the model of a failed and corrupt establishment.A clue to how Newsom might navigate the rocky terrain comes almost as soon as we sit down. I notice, as he starts talking, a vintage hand gesture: the thumb resting on bent forefinger to emphasize a point, unmistakably borrowed from a certain former president. \u201cI watch videos of Clinton,\u201d he tells me. \u201cI seek his counsel, his advice, and even in his absence, do that. I\u2019ve been a student of his from day one.\u201dThe two have an actual relationship, talking late at night about strategy and ideas, including how to tackle the California problem. \u201cHe calls me late at night, wanting to talk about it, and he goes, \u2018I\u2019ve been thinking just nonstop about this. I just think you represent what they fear.\u2019\u201d\u201cHe\u2019s very mindful of that,\u201d Newsom says. \u201cIt\u2019s a problem to be solved, and no greater problem solver in that respect than Bill Clinton, in my mind. Master of his craft. Next-level.\u201dInvoking Clinton would seem a risky maneuver, not least because of Clinton\u2019s apparent association with Jeffrey Epstein, but also because the man critics called \u201cSlick Willie\u201d is the very model of the kind of compromised liberalism the new left reviles. Clinton\u2019s public favorability is middling at best, rating well below Sanders, the closest thing to a genuinely popular Democrat. (Clinton has denied having any knowledge of Epstein\u2019s crimes and wrongdoing. He declined to be interviewed for this story.)With a decision to run for president just over the midterms horizon\u2014\u201cI don\u2019t think you have the luxury of much more time,\u201d he tells me\u2014Newsom is pitching himself as the Reasonable Man, a seasoned technician of center-left governance who steered the fourth-largest economy in the world with one hand and fought MAGA with the other. He is even drafting policy ideas and calling it Project 2029. After years of herding his state\u2019s liberal cats, Newsom treats the new breed of progressive ideologues\u2014New York mayor Zohran Mamdani being the exemplar\u2014as Johnny-come-latelies.\u201cSo much of what the DSA is promoting, I\u2019m like, Been there, done that,\u201d says Newsom, pointing to Assembly Bill 1482 as the \u201cmost progressive rent control in America.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m the biggest climate champion that you know, but I\u2019m not antibusiness.\u201dThe Democratic Socialists of America trades in \u201cslogans,\u201d Newsom observes. When he sees Democrats applauding for what he calls \u201cpablum and rhetoric,\u201d he asks, \u201cFor that?\u201dGO EAST, YOUNG MAN Newsom and his ex-wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, in 2004.\nStephen J. Boitano/ Getty ImagesNewsom may look like a chip off the Nancy Pelosi bloc (they\u2019re distantly related and share a donor base), but that doesn\u2019t mean he\u2019s part of any so-called establishment. \u201cWell, I\u2019m not,\u201d he insists. \u201cI\u2019m not. I mean, I\u2019ve been at this awhile. To the extent I\u2019m established, in that context\u2014but I\u2019m notoriously a disrupter at heart. I\u2019ve never been for the status quo. Quite the contrary. I have a record that consistently challenges the status quo, and I tend to take risks to a degree that few elected officials do.\u201dSounds like a sales pitch. Before we leave Vegas, Newsom invites me to California to see him in his natural habitat. \u201cBring security,\u201d he jokes. \u201cAnd bring extra money.\u201dI\u2019m wearing an orange hard hat on a construction site in Oakland, and Newsom, conspicuously, is not.\u201cI\u2019ve got my OSHA-approved hair,\u201d he jokes to a small group of helmeted functionaries standing inside a half-built apartment complex in Chinatown. \u201cI got a waiver a few years ago.\u201dDecked out in six feet three inches of blue suit, he\u2019s signing a bill meant to speed up housing construction. California remains a brutal state for the working class and poor. I ask him why it took eight years to get to housing reform when he might have done it in his first hundred days. \u201cI didn\u2019t have the political capital,\u201d he tells me flatly.Newsom also credits Ezra Klein, the New York Times columnist, for pressuring him during a podcast conversation and in his 2025 book, Abundance, to dig into the environmental laws that block infrastructure and housing. \u201cEzra kicked my ass,\u201d he says. \u201cI respect my critics. I love them. Thank them. Pay attention to them.\u201dNewsom has been crowing about a 9 percent drop in unsheltered homelessness over the past year, though the numbers are in dispute. The state\u2019s Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office argues that they\u2019re underreported. Newsom vetoed a bill meant to improve accountability, arguing that it was \u201cduplicative.\u201dFAMILY MATTERS At the World Series with spouse Jennifer Siebel Newsom and their daughter, Montana, in 2010.\nJustin Sullivan/Getty ImagesKlein, for his part, is reluctant to take credit for Newsom\u2019s come-to-Jesus on housing, pointing to other intense political pressures. But he agrees with Newsom himself that Clinton is an accurate political ancestor.\u201cI think a lot about Bill Clinton when I think of Gavin Newsom,\u201d Klein tells me. \u201cThe thing that defined Bill Clinton, his political strength, was to reconcile opposite political tendencies and, at the same time, to fluidly move with reality. You can say that of Gavin: He changes and adapts. I think that\u2019s been his great political strength.\u201d (Klein declined to weigh in on Newsom\u2019s broader prospects.)When the DSA championed a one-time 5 percent tax on California\u2019s billionaires, they painted Newsom\u2019s opposition as proof he was \u201ctrying to protect 250 prospective 2028 presidential donors, even if that means 3 million of his constituents are medically bankrupted,\u201d as liberal journalist David Sirota put it. Newsom, openly worried about losing his tax base, parried with his own proposal, a national billionaire\u2019s tax. Upon close inspection, it was more of a federal tax-bracket adjustment for people making over $100 million and headlined with a populist slogan. But it performed a neat piece of political jujitsu: blunting the attack from his left flank while inviting cries of \u201csocialist!\u201d from the right, thereby burnishing his progressive cred.Even a master cynic like Steve Bannon, the MAGA philosopher king who was an early guest on Newsom\u2019s podcast, This Is Gavin Newsom, can\u2019t help but be impressed by his tactical chutzpah: \u201cGame respects game.\u201d Of Prop 50, Bannon told me: \u201cHe smoked us on that,\u201d effusing about Newsom\u2019s brinkmanship, predicting he\u2019ll be a \u201chero\u201d if the Democrats manage to take the Senate and adding, \u201cHaving Gavin Newsom as president wouldn\u2019t be the worst thing in the world.\u201dBut, Bannon hastens to add, he doesn\u2019t think Newsom is built for what\u2019s coming. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t understand the moment he\u2019s in,\u201d Bannon says. \u201cEvery morning, he\u2019s got to wake up and think about who he is that day. And what he stands for. That\u2019s not the time we\u2019re in. He\u2019s trying to glide on the surface of a deep civil war within the Democratic Party.\u201dI remind Newsom that Bannon, in their podcast conversation, predicted he would become an \u201ceconomic populist,\u201d the ideology now animating the far left as it did Bannon\u2019s nationalist right. \u201cIt\u2019s a really interesting insight that\u2019s staring me now in the face,\u201d Newsom admits.THE RIGHT STUFF Holding court early in his career, at City Hall back in 2001, when Newsom served as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.\nAnthony Pidgeon/Getty ImagesLast spring, Newsom had a private meeting with Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was in San Francisco supporting taxes on billionaires. Her advice to him: \u201cName the villain.\u201d \u201cI felt like I was getting schooled a little bit,\u201d Newsom says of the meeting. \u201cI don\u2019t have a problem with the villain. This notion that if you\u2019re successful somehow, you\u2019re the villain, or you had a stroke of luck, you\u2019re a villain, I have a harder time with.\u201dNewsom is, in that sense, a villain.\u201cI don\u2019t begrudge other people\u2019s success,\u201d he continues, citing his own wine business, PlumpJack, which he launched in 1992, when he was 24. A recent estimate pegged his net worth at roughly $30 million, with an annual income of about $2 million, according to recent tax filings. He owns two houses, worth an estimated $16.5 million. \u201cI just don\u2019t feel that. I\u2019d be faking that. That\u2019s inauthentic of me to say that. I aspire to it. I think it\u2019s actually one of the things that\u2019s always frustrating about my party. I\u2019m a small-business person, and I intimately appreciate the risk-taking and the contribution of businesses. And I don\u2019t think you could be pro-job and antibusiness.\u201d The devil, he says, \u201cis in the details.\u201d\u201cBut,\u201d he finishes, \u201cI believe billionaires should pay more taxes. Period. Full stop. One hundred percent.\u201dNewsom performs a similar dance when faced with the third-rail issues electrifying the far left: Israel, where the stakes are moral, and artificial intelligence, where they\u2019re both financial and moral.The brightest red line for the rising DSA is calling Israel\u2019s military campaign in Gaza a genocide. Last March, Newsom agreed that Israel was in effect an \u201capartheid state\u201d but then walked it back, suggesting he was misunderstood. When I ask him about it, Newsom tells me the media was \u201cwildly overreading my first comments\u201d and \u201cwildly overreading the second comments.\u201dHe wasn\u2019t calling Israel an apartheid state, he says, but he wasn\u2019t not calling it one either. \u201cYou\u2019re dealing with the one guy\u2014the only guy?\u2014who brought a field hospital to Gaza. No one else did. I also can\u2019t stand antisemitism. It sickens me to my core.\u201dHe mentions Jewish family members on his wife\u2019s side and says words like Zionist and genocide are \u201cloaded terms that mean many different things to many different people, and I could play into those binaries. People aren\u2019t going to listen to a damn thing you say unless you\u2019re willing to align with a word.\u201dHe still refuses to call what happened in Gaza\u2014more than 73,000 Palestinians killed by Israel since Hamas attacked and killed 1,200 and abducted 251 hostages on October 7, 2023\u2014a genocide, even when I push him on it repeatedly. \u201cI\u2019m not able to objectively conclude that,\u201d he tells me. \u201cWere there war crimes? Crystal clear...but I\u2019ll leave that to the courts in more objective lines because it relates to the pure definition.\u201dIt\u2019s a Newsomian reflex: Refuse the label, keep both audiences half satisfied, and let the ambiguity do the political work a position never will. \u201cNuance,\u201d he says. \u201cNuance.\u201dNewsom takes a similarly tactical approach to artificial intelligence, probably the defining issue of the coming presidential cycle. Two years ago, California\u2019s legislature voted for the first state bill regulating AI, Senate Bill 1047, sponsored by state senator Scott Wiener, who wanted to make AI companies liable for harm caused to society. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote Newsom that the bill\u2019s \u201cbenefits likely outweigh its costs,\u201d while OpenAI and the Trump-aligned venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz opposed it, the latter launching a public campaign and hiring a Newsom confidant as a lobbyist. Newsom pal Ron Conway, the venture capitalist and Democratic mega-donor who has stakes in OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral, called the bill \u201cvery, very ill-conceived.\u201dNewsom says that after he vetoed it, \u201cpeople quietly said thank you.\u201d He encouraged a narrower and less censorious bill based on a white paper he commissioned from various AI experts, including Fei-Fei Li. He announced his intention to sign the resulting bill, SB 53, at a 2025 Clinton Global Initiative event with Clinton, telling reporters, \u201cWe worked with industry, but we didn\u2019t submit to industry.\u201dNewsom says if he were president he\u2019d build a federal response to AI dangers based on California\u2019s model: \u201cI would be leading an international movement focusing on the issue of truth, and safety, and trust.\u201d Conway argues that Newsom\u2019s friendly relationship with AI leaders are a feature, not a bug. Newsom knows Sam Altman personally, so he\u2019s uniquely positioned to broker solutions.\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of bullshit in this space,\u201d Newsom says. \u201cAs much as I admire and believe in a lot of what I\u2019m hearing from a lot of these folks, I also am mindful of capitalism, and mindful of a lot of self-dealing, and very mindful of the innovation that is important to maintain in this space.\u201dHe has promised to \u201cdemocratize the economy\u201d and redistribute tech wealth, floating a version of Sanders\u2019s idea for a sovereign wealth fund with a 50 percent public stake in AI companies, though Newsom won\u2019t put a percentage on it and points to the Trump Accounts, Trump\u2019s government-backed investments for children, as his favored model. \u201cIt\u2019s just the bane of my existence not calling them Newsom Accounts.\u201d Artificial intelligence is \u201cputting the dagger in the heart of the status quo,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd so something big, bold has to be written, and so you\u2019ve got to renegotiate this contract.\u201dNewsom says negotiating state AI laws has soured him on some of the tech leaders, though he won\u2019t name them. \u201cI\u2019ve lost relationships with these guys,\u201d Newsom says. \u201cI don\u2019t recognize them. What the hell happened to these people? I have animus now that I never had. I think power corrupts\u2014how they\u2019ve been able to corrupt and manipulate the political system.\u201d\u201cI don\u2019t care if they voted for Trump,\u201d he continues. \u201cThey were always libertarian. But it\u2019s the nature of just too much abundance, too much wealth, too much isolation, too much indulgence, and too much power. Because the money buys you power.\u201dFor a second, he sounds like Sanders. Maybe Bannon was right?If Clinton was \u201cthe man from Hope,\u201d Newsom, a multimillionaire wine merchant, presents a less folksy version: \u201cthe man from Napa.\u201dYoung Man in a Hurry, Newsom\u2019s 2026 memoir, was an attempt to make himself seem like a real boy and not just a political Pinocchio. Though he stretches to make the case that he earned his own way in life\u2014he grew up the son of a single mother in working-class circumstances\u2014Newsom was well-connected before he was out of diapers. His father, William \u201cBill\u201d A. Newsom III, went to an elite San Francisco prep school with Gordon Getty and John Paul Getty Jr., sons of the billionaire oil magnate J. Paul Getty, and served as the Getty family fixer in the 1960s and \u201970s.When Gordon\u2019s parents divorced, he briefly moved into the Newsom household as a teenager. After Newsom\u2019s parents filed for divorce in 1971, Newsom was unofficially adopted by Gordon, repaying the favor the Newsoms had extended decades earlier. Gordon took young Gavin and his sister, Hilary, on family vacations, including to watch whales in Canada and view elephants in Kenya. Newsom revels in the gossip of his own access: In 1973, when John Paul Getty III was kidnapped by the Calabrian Mafia in Italy\u2014they cut off his ear and mailed it to the press, demanding $17 million for his safe return\u2014it was Newsom\u2019s father, whom Newsom calls the \u201cconsigliere to the Getty family in times of turmoil\u201d in his book, who negotiated and arranged the delivery of a reduced $2.2 million to the kidnappers. When Paul finally made his way back to California, he went toy shopping with Newsom and his sister.In the early 1990s, Gordon Getty seeded Newsom\u2019s Napa Valley wine start-up, PlumpJack, which Newsom launched with Gordon\u2019s son Billy and named after an opera Gordon had composed. Later, Newsom fell out with Billy over a property dispute involving a house they jointly owned. In his memoir, Newsom called the breakup \u201cone of the great holes of my life.\u201dNewsom was a Gen X child. A superfan of Sylvester Stallone\u2019s first Rocky movie, he set up a makeshift boxing ring in his backyard and held neighborhood matches. He went through a phase as an amateur magician called the Great Gavini. He based his clothes and hairstyle on Remington Steele, the 1980s TV show starring Pierce Brosnan as a charming con man, a confession some found baffling. More baffling still: He appears to have kept the look for life.He majored in political science at Santa Clara University, admitted on recommendations from a member of the school\u2019s board of regents and former governor Jerry Brown, a friend of his father\u2019s. He received a partial baseball scholarship but never played in a game. A former teammate described it as \u201ckind of the standing joke that Newsom played on the team.\u201dNewsom, for all his political storytelling, is transparent about his lifelong dyslexia, which shaped his mind in unusual and crucial ways. When reading a book or speech, he has to underline every word to track and make sense of it. Because he doesn\u2019t work well with a teleprompter, he memorizes speeches in advance, which has made him quick with data and able to debate with alacrity. An operative in Sacramento tells me, \u201cHe has a mind like a steel trap that remembers absolutely everything.\u201d\u201cYou\u2019ve never seen me read a speech,\u201d Newsom has said, \u201cbecause I cannot read a speech. Maybe the wrong business to be in.\u201dNewsom\u2019s first foray into politics was volunteering for Willie Brown\u2019s 1995 San Francisco mayoral campaign, which led to an appointment on the Parking and Traffic Commission, which led to an unelected seat on the Board of Supervisors. By the time he ran for mayor in 2003, Newsom had the backing of Brown\u2019s establishment.His defining political act as mayor was to advocate for gay marriage in 2004, a maverick move at a time when Democrats were treading carefully to avoid a wedge issue in the presidential election.But while he married gay couples in the face of cultural headwinds, his own dating life sometimes eclipsed the headlines. Local press published power rankings of his \u201cside pieces.\u201d Kimberly Guilfoyle had previously dated Billy Getty before they were introduced at a political fundraiser. At the time, Guilfoyle was an assistant DA in San Francisco prosecuting a high-profile dog-mauling case and making the rounds on cable news. Game respects game: Their three-year marriage was seared into the public imagination with a 2004 photo spread in Harper\u2019s Bazaar of the two spooning in eveningwear on the floor of a house owned by Gordon and Ann Getty. The story was titled \u201cThe New Kennedys.\u201d When Guilfoyle started working for Court TV in New York, Newsom would review tapes of her broadcasts, critiquing her facial expressions. After they separated in 2004, Newsom had an affair with Ruby Rippey, the wife of his own deputy chief of staff Alex Tourk, which became tabloid fodder. (Rippey wrote about the affair, and her struggle and recovery from alcoholism, for Vanity Fair.)Newsom met his wife, the actor and documentary maker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, on a blind date in 2006. When the night ended, Newsom recounts in his book, Jennifer discovered that her car was locked in a parking garage. Newsom invited her to stay over \u201cplatonically\u201d at his house. \u201cThe living room had no sofa and the windows had no blinds,\u201d he writes in his memoir. \u201cTo keep out the sun, I had taped rolls of black plastic over them. She later confessed that her first glimpse of my abode brought to mind a question: \u2018Did this guy take his interior design inspiration from American Psycho?\u2019\u201dLater she was living in his apartment when an actual psychotic stalker tried breaking into the building with a roll of duct tape. Police found a cassette tape in the man\u2019s car labeled \u201cPresident Newsom.\u201dFEELING PRIDEFUL At the Gay Pride Parade in 2017.\nMeera Fox/Getty ImagesThe couple married in 2008, and Siebel Newsom was quickly cast in the role of stabilizing force, an attractive, wealthy, and engaged political partner for an aspiring politician. She developed her own feminist profile, producing documentaries about women in media and parenting boys, and in 2022 became the star witness at Harvey Weinstein\u2019s Los Angeles sexual assault trial, testifying\u2014under the designation Jane Doe #4\u2014that Weinstein had raped her in a Beverly Hills hotel room in 2005.(Weinstein\u2019s defense attorneys argued the encounter was consensual, portraying her as a \u201cself-confident, ambitious Stanford business school graduate\u201d who had stayed in friendly contact with Weinstein afterward. The jury eventually convicted Weinstein but deadlocked on the counts related to Siebel Newsom.)When I ask Newsom whether Siebel Newsom would make a good first lady of the United States, he doesn\u2019t hesitate. \u201cOh God, yeah,\u201d he says. \u201cNext-level. I mean, she\u2019s got the values, the competency. She\u2019s got, you know, a learnedness. She\u2019s got a point of view.\u201dPerhaps the biggest scandal of Newsom\u2019s career came when he was photographed dining at the upscale French Laundry during enforced COVID lockdowns and social distancing across California. A right-wing group tried ousting him from office through California\u2019s recall process, but Newsom outspent his opponents roughly two to one ($3 million from Reed Hastings, cofounder of Netflix; $1 million from George Soros) and beat back the recall. The whole thing cost taxpayers $200 million.\u201cHe didn\u2019t try and run away from it,\u201d says Conway. \u201cHe faced it head-on, and fought it head-on, and got the result he should have gotten. We defeated it.\u201dNewsom says the fight \u201cwas an extraordinary gift in some ways\u201d because it caused him to reflect on who he was. \u201cAnd that\u2019s been a great process. Are there certain patterns?\u201dNot that he doesn\u2019t regret dining at The French Laundry.\u201cOf course. It was boneheaded. It was a costly stress test. What the hell was I thinking?\u201dThe political near-death experience appeared to embolden him for his next incarnation: the online alpha Trump fighter. \u201cTINY HANDS IS OUT HERE COPYING ME\u2014BUT WITHOUT THE STAMINA (SAD),\u201d he posted on X last summer. As a former deputy communications director for the governor, Alex Stack, summed up the new Newsom worldview: \u201cPolitics is all content now.\u201dBILL PASSING Newsom and Bill Clinton in 2009 in LA, where the former president helped raise funds for Newsom\u2019s campaign.\nKevork Djansezian/Getty ImagesIt was Newsom\u2019s eldest son, Hunter, who alerted him to the content that defined Trump\u2019s 2024 victory among young male voters. \u201cWhen he started talking to me about Andrew Tate, I got nervous,\u201d Newsom tells me, referring to the kickboxer-influencer and alleged sex trafficker who has denied wrongdoing. \u201cHe said, \u2018Andrew Tate\u2019s innocent. Hey, Dad, he\u2019s in Florida. He\u2019s coming to California. You should be with him.\u2019 Like...no? And how do you know about this guy? And then he\u2019s talking to me about Charlie Kirk, and he\u2019s talking about Jordan Peterson, and I\u2019m like, What the hell is going on? And then I look at his [social media] search, and it\u2019s just, like, basketball.\u201dNewsom started his podcast explicitly to connect with young men, presenting himself as a Democratic problem solver and his own kind of alterna-bro. To book Kirk, his inaugural guest, Newsom connected through Guilfoyle. (\u201cObviously, they have a shared past,\u201d Kirk later said.) I ask Newsom what he learned from his forays into the manosphere. \u201cIt\u2019s the boyosphere,\u201d he says, describing a world of online nihilists living at home with no romantic or financial prospects. \u201cIt\u2019s not the manosphere. That\u2019s the biggest revelation, and I think it\u2019s a profoundly significant distinction.\u201dA Democratic strategist complains to me that Newsom is overly obsessed with the mechanics of politics\u2014the platforms, the algorithms, the cultivated influencers\u2014but \u201cglitches out\u201d when asked his vision for the country. Ro Khanna, the progressive congressman from Silicon Valley and a potential 2028 contender himself, tells me Newsom is ambition in search of an animating belief. \u201cHe wants the rhetoric of boldness without actually the courage of pissing people off,\u201d Khanna says, citing the billionaire tax dodge. \u201cThe politician that Gavin Newsom most resembles is Bill Clinton.\u201d Khanna doesn\u2019t mean it in a positive way, arguing that Clinton was a \u201ccenter-right\u201d politician.Mike Madrid, a cofounder of the Lincoln Project who advised a rival campaign against Newsom in 2018, hears versions of the same question everywhere he goes: opportunist or visionary? Newsom let down working-class Californians, especially Latinos, he says, but he won\u2019t deny his political gifts. \u201cAnybody who\u2019s counting Gavin Newsom out is making a very, very big mistake,\u201d he tells me. \u201cHe\u2019s a truly generational talent, one of the most talented Democrats in the country.\u201d\u201cHe\u2019s not afraid of confrontation,\u201d he continues. \u201cHe\u2019s not afraid of the attacks that are going to come on him. He leans into that, he understands how to turn attention into a strength, even if it\u2019s negative. As long as the media spotlight is focused on him, he\u2019s in contention.\u201dIf that sounds like a description of Trump, it\u2019s no coincidence. Newsom is probably the most studied politician in America, absorbing styles and ideas\u2014whether Clinton\u2019s thumb gesture or Trump\u2019s media strategy\u2014and making them his own with a Cheshire grin.Newsom can come off as hammy and performative onstage\u2014his cadences sometimes call to mind William Shatner as Captain Kirk\u2014but he insists that whatever conviction looks like, he has a battle-hardened version of it. \u201cThey want a fighter,\u201d he says of Democrats. \u201cAnd the good thing is, look, I can back up a lot of the rhetoric, and that\u2019s the difference. I\u2019ve been at this long enough. I\u2019ve got receipts, and I know what works.\u201dBut former vice president Kamala Harris is threatening to crowd the centrist Californian got-the-receipts lane in a prospective Democratic lineup and already polling higher than Newsom among likely 2028 voters. In interviews, Newsom has slimed her with the faintest praise, talking about her like she\u2019s retired since her 2024 loss to Trump (\u201cshe\u2019s lived an extraordinary life\u201d) and suggesting in an interview with Axios that she might run for office again, such as \u201cschool board.\u201dIn our interview, Newsom suggests she\u2019s weak, complaining that the Harris campaign in 2024 didn\u2019t stand up for California\u2019s Medi-Cal expansion to undocumented immigrants, a policy he had shepherded into law, after it came under attack from Trump and JD Vance. \u201cEveryone criticized me during the Harris campaign for that,\u201d says Newsom. \u201cWe\u2019re practicing it. Now you\u2019re running away from it.\u201dIn September, Newsom told CNN that he wouldn\u2019t run for president in 2028 if Harris ran, though it may have been less a binding promise than a tactical signal to Black voters, especially in South Carolina, the first major primary state in the 2028 election, where he\u2019d just visited. When I ask if he\u2019d drop out of the race were Harris to announce her candidacy after him, he punts but adds: \u201cYou can\u2019t hold off on making a decision, waiting, waiting, waiting. But I don\u2019t think that will\u2014I\u2019m not concerned about that, candidly.\u201dI ask Newsom to imagine himself in a debate of primary candidates in 2028, facing off against the likes of New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, likely to scorch him for his political impurities. \u201cGive me the time and I\u2019m happy to give you the crime, as they say,\u201d he says, reworking the original expression before catching himself and adding, \u201cI just mean that in the context of \u2018politics is politics.\u2019\u2009\u201d\u201cI look forward to that debate,\u201d he tells me. \u201cOh you better believe it.\u201dIn June, Newsom learned of an FBI fraud investigation targeting him and his wife and went on the offensive, posting a dramatic video that tried to define the news cycle before it could define him, casting himself as Trump\u2019s chief antagonist.Newsom alleges that a fraud case against his former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, morphed into an investigation of Newsom himself. The case predates Trump\u2019s term, and the alleged crimes didn\u2019t take place in Newsom\u2019s office, but once Trump was elected, Newsom claims, the Department of Justice went on a fishing expedition to get something on him. \u201cTrump took it to the next level to go after us, came up with nothing, so they were like, \u2018Find something,\u2019\u2009\u201d he tells me. \u201cThat\u2019s abuse of power. And that\u2019s when I said, \u2018Enough.\u2019\u2009\u201d (Attorney General Todd Blanche has publicly disputed Newsom\u2019s account.)None of it has implicated Newsom personally, but it did highlight some gamy dealings, like the $4.28 million his wife\u2019s nonprofit, the California Partners Project, received from donors with business before the state. Newsom helped pipe $1.05 million from a Sonoma County tribe to his wife\u2019s nonprofit in 2023, then appointed the tribe\u2019s chairman to the UC Board of Regents less than three months after the final payment, a sequence investigators are reportedly examining.The transactions are legal under California\u2019s permissive behested-payment rules, but none of it looks particularly ethical. Earlier this year, Newsom was fined $31,500 for failing to report more than $5.5 million in behested payments on time. He says he \u201cscrewed up on the paperwork\u201d while trying to raise money for victims of the LA wildfires.It was during the fires that Newsom had a tense encounter with Trump, poking a finger in his chest and gripping his arm on a tarmac and riding with him in a limo to Malibu, which Newsom details in his memoir, suggesting Trump was obsessed with him (telling him his wife was \u201chot\u201d) and also personally hurt when Newsom attacked him at his own inauguration afterward, calling Newsom up to make sure they were still \u201cgood.\u201dSCORCHED EARTH President Donald Trump and Newsom trek through the aftermath of the 2018 wildfires in Paradise, California.\nSaul Loeb/Getty ImagesI ask Newsom whether the appearance of self-dealing in the FBI investigation, even if legal, undercuts his ability to effectively attack the man he calls \u201csimply the most corrupt president in American history.\u201d\u201cNo, total bullshit,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is why he\u2019s doing it.\u201dGame respects game.For Newsom, the fight itself is the point. Whatever Trump throws at him, Newsom reframes it as proof that he, personally, is the one MAGA fears most, less a governor under a cloud of suspicion than the Democratic Party\u2019s designated boss, martyred and re-martyred in real time, on-brand and ready for the next fundraising email. To wit: Within hours of announcing the DOJ investigation, Newsom sent out a fundraising blast and raised a quarter-million dollars in two weeks, leveling up a $14.4 million war chest ready-made for 2028.Newsom, who thrives on surfing the daily chaos of the Trump era, admits the current moment, pitting populist right against populist left, unnerves him. \u201cI\u2019m worried about the pendulum,\u201d he tells me back in Vegas, \u201cbecause it doesn\u2019t go back to the middle.\u201dIt\u2019s as close as he comes to expressing genuine doubt. Newsom\u2019s ostentatious embrace of Clinton would suggest he believes Trump has realigned American politics to the right like Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s, and that a successful move for Democrats is a tack to the middle. But few people seem to believe the middle exists anymore, and Newsom\u2019s critics question whether he has an actual vision. The first time I ask him, he stumbles.\u201cI think I do,\u201d he says. \u201cI certainly have, as a governor, from a governing perspective\u2014from a campaign perspective, it\u2019s a little different. How do you paint that picture of a journey we can all go on together, where everyone feels included?\u201dThe second time I ask, following an appearance at the InterContinental hotel in Los Angeles, he still resists: \u201cThe hesitation is only because I don\u2019t want to make it a campaign slogan, and I don\u2019t have a campaign slogan for you.\u201dNewsom was arranging a tour of Southern states later in the summer, specifically to get his face in front of South Carolinians. It\u2019s a chance, he says, to connect with the electorate and figure out his own gut. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to start to feel it,\u201d Newsom says, beating his chest. \u201cYou know, it\u2019s the Nietzsche: \u2018If you don\u2019t have a big enough why you can\u2019t endure the how.\u2019\u2009\u201dThe presidential campaign process will be an MRI on everything Newsom has ever said and done, and \u201cwho the hell needs to go out there and get the MRI on words?\u201d But of course words matter, as Newsom well knows.\u201cMy why is to stand up for ideals and strike out against injustice,\u201d he says. \u201cIt explains more things in more ways on some of the things I\u2019ve done over the last 20 years, personally and professionally. Number two: We\u2019re all better off. So this fundamental notion of the commonwealth is deeply ingrained in my consciousness.\u201dJust when it seems he\u2019s making it all up on the fly, he mentions a nascent platform he\u2019s been sketching out, which he dubbed Project 2029 after the MAGA blueprint Project 2025. \u201cI\u2019ve quite literally written out, like, eight pages of commonsense good policy ideas that are long overdue, that would be a framework of a 2029 plan,\u201d he tells me.Later, in the same conversation, the page count grows: \u201cI have, I kid you not, 36 pages of ideas.\u201d He has notebooks of ideas in his car, he says, and invites me to see them. So we get into an elevator and head down to the subbasement of the hotel, arriving at a delivery entrance pungent with garbage smells and a team of stone-faced Secret Service agents hovering around the governor\u2019s black SUV. He opens the back door and rifles through a leather duffel bag, pulling out a pile of notepads and loose-leaf paper filled with handwritten scrawl. He flips through, reading off bits and pieces, until he gets to a page marked \u201cPROJECT 2029: Ideas for Democrats.\u201d\u201cNo one touches these,\u201d he says. \u201cThese are my own little version. This is just policy, not narrative, the kinds of things we need to do: zoning reform, corporate tax, junk-fee stuff, new domestic strategies and tariffs, preschool things, a cap on childcare, family leave, paid sick leave, child tax credits, industrial decarbonization, anti-monopoly stuff, immigration, whistleblower protections.\u201dI ask if this stuff is for January 6, 2029, the day a new president is certified by Congress. He smiles coyly. I note that Bobby Kennedy also toured the South in 1968 during his own run for the presidency. At this, Newsom brightens, mentioning a framed photograph at home, a black-and-white image of Kennedy kneeling in front of a young boy next to an old beat-up car. Newsom says he looks at the image while he brushes his teeth every morning. He gets down on one knee to imitate the Bobby Kennedy pose in the garage of the InterContinental.\u201cYeah, that\u2019s the why,\u201d he muses. \u201cLet\u2019s stand up for ideals.\u201dNewsom loves the performance. The Rocky Balboa of it all, the Bill Clinton of it all, the Bobby Kennedy of it all.He will undoubtedly draw punches from both ends of the political divide, both saying essentially the same thing: slick, shallow, failed, corrupt, cynical, visionless. And, of course, Californian. Can Newsom survive the debate this country wants to have?\u201cI don\u2019t have a problem fighting,\u201d Newsom tells me. \u201cNor do I have a problem getting roughed up and getting back up. I\u2019ve been road tested. It\u2019s not small ball out here in California.\u201dHis chin is out and ready.From Prince George to Princess Leonor: Where Young Royals Will Attend School This FallThe Pitt\u2019s Patrick Ball on Shipping, Stardom, and Season 3From Cowboys to Clean Girls: The State of American Style, in Pictures" ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790781321.072802", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-30T16:16:16.206204+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.vanityfair.com/story/gavin-newsom-interview" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-30T16:16:16.198889+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "Gavin Newsom Is Ready for His Next Act. 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