Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, embarking on a personal post-mortem of the failures of his Democratic Party, suggested this week that the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports was “deeply unfair.”
The comments by Mr. Newsom, who has backed L.G.B.T.Q. causes for decades and was one of the first American elected officials to officiate same-sex weddings, represented a remarkable break from other top Democrats on the issue, and signaled a newly defensive position on transgender rights among many in his party.
Just as surprising as Mr. Newsom’s remarks was the person to whom he made them: Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old right-wing influencer best known for starting Turning Point USA, the pro-Trump organization that is active on college campuses.
Mr. Newsom invited Mr. Kirk, who has a history of inflammatory and conspiratorial remarks, onto the debut episode of his new podcast, “This Is Gavin Newsom,” for an 81-minute discussion. The governor, who has long been fascinated with the conservative media ecosystem and tried to inject himself into it, explained his unlikely guest by saying, “People need to understand your success, your influence, what you’ve been up to.”
Mr. Newsom is widely seen as having presidential ambitions in 2028 — something he joked about on the podcast. For years, he was one of the fiercest Democratic antagonists toward President Trump, casting himself as a next-generation liberal warrior fluent in conservative orthodoxy who could lead his party into the post-Biden era.
But in recent months he has softened his tone toward Mr. Trump and attacked Democrats over their strategy. In December, Mr. Newsom cursed the president-elect’s name in an interview with The New York Times, but shortly after the inauguration, the governor traveled to Washington for a meeting with Mr. Trump to discuss funding for wildfire relief.
Mr. Newsom spent much of his conversation with Mr. Kirk reflecting on the myriad ways that former Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign failed to reach key voters during the 2024 election, losing ground with young people, men and Hispanic voters.
But his most significant revelation on his podcast, which was released on Thursday morning, came when Mr. Kirk pressed the California governor to agree with him that it was unfair for transgender women to compete in women’s sports.
“I think it’s an issue of fairness, I completely agree with you on that,” Mr. Newsom said. “It is an issue of fairness. It’s deeply unfair.”
He also acknowledged the effectiveness of Mr. Trump’s signature campaign ad, which declared: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
“It was devastating,” Mr. Newsom said. “And she didn’t even react to it, which was even more devastating.”
Since Democrats’ election loss last year, Mr. Newsom has become the most prominent official in the party to lament its position on transgender participation in sports, but he is hardly the first. Hours after the presidential race was called, Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts told The Times that he did not want his young daughters “getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete,” a remark that set off weeks of blowback.
Since taking office, Mr. Trump has taken steps to try to erase transgender people from American life. He has eliminated the T — for transgender — from federal L.G.B.T.Q. policies online and moved to ban transgender people from serving in the military.
Mr. Trump also signed an executive order meant to prohibit transgender women and girls from competing in women’s sports, directing federal agencies to withhold funding from schools if they did not comply. A day later, the N.C.A.A. instituted such a ban. More than two dozen states now bar transgender athletes from school sports, whether in K-12 schools or at colleges.
Democrats have shown increased caution on the issue, but many have tried to push back. On Monday, the party’s senators blocked a Republican bill that closely resembled Mr. Trump’s executive order, arguing that the G.O.P. was seeking political gain by targeting a small, vulnerable group of children.
Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator from San Francisco who is openly gay, said it was deeply disappointing to hear Mr. Newsom “align” with Republicans on the issue.
“It was a gut punch from any Democratic leader, and particularly from Governor Newsom, because he has been such a staunch ally for the L.G.B.T.Q. community,” Mr. Wiener said.
Kelley Robinson, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group, said Mr. Newsom’s comments were misguided and politically inept.
“The fight for equality has never been easy, but history doesn’t remember those who waver — it remembers those who refuse to back down,” Ms. Robinson said. “Our message to Governor Newsom and all leaders across the country is simple: The path to 2028 isn’t paved with the betrayal of vulnerable communities.”
On his podcast, Mr. Newsom spoke at length about the political effectiveness of attacking transgender people in the presidential campaign. He called Mr. Trump’s “they/them” commercial “a great ad.” He also questioned the practice of people announcing their preferred pronouns when introducing themselves.
“I had one meeting where people started going around the table with pronouns,” Mr. Newsom said. “I’m like, ‘What the hell, why is this the biggest issue?’”
But at other points in the conversation, the governor criticized “the way that people talk down to vulnerable communities” and discussed the high rates of suicide and depression among transgender people.
“So, both things I can hold in my hand,” he said.
At the beginning of Mr. Newsom’s political career, after he was elected mayor of San Francisco in 2003, he officiated at same-sex weddings before they were allowed by law. He routinely participated in the city’s famed Pride parade and for decades has supported expanding rights for L.G.B.T.Q. people.
He is also the godfather to Nats Getty, a designer and oil heir who came out as transgender in 2021 and is married to Gigi Gorgeous, a transgender YouTube personality. The governor delivered a video toast at the couple’s wedding in 2019.
Last year, as school boards in conservative regions of California passed policies to require educators to notify parents if a child went by a different gender identity at school, Mr. Newsom signed a state law prohibiting such rules.
L.G.B.T.Q. advocates welcomed the law, while conservatives said it infringed on parents’ rights. Elon Musk cited the law as a reason to move the headquarters of his company SpaceX to Texas from California.
A California law that allows students to play on sports teams that align with their gender identities was signed in 2013 by Jerry Brown, the Democratic governor at the time. In recent months, Republican legislators have introduced bills to reverse it, but they have not yet been heard in committee. Democrats hold a supermajority in the California Legislature and typically scuttle bills they perceive as attacks on L.G.B.T.Q. rights before they can reach Mr. Newsom’s desk. He has not publicly taken a position on the new legislation.
Mr. Newsom has also tried to show that he wants to talk with Republicans, and is willing to tangle with them. He has kept up a regular line of communication with Sean Hannity, the conservative Fox News host, and he debated Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, on live television in 2023. He has also long maintained private social media accounts curated to show him pro-Trump content.
So it was little surprise that Mr. Newsom expressed familiarity with the issues that most animated Mr. Kirk, who is himself a prominent podcaster and TikTok influencer. Mr. Newsom spent much of the discussion agreeing with Mr. Kirk on issues that have long been anathema to Democratic voters, seemingly working out in real time why Democrats lost ground to Republicans last year.
As to what the party should do next, Mr. Newsom blasted prominent Democrats — notably the strategist James Carville — who have suggested that the party allow Mr. Trump to become unpopular on his own and wait to offer a competing alternative.
“I’m thinking about, ‘We’re going to stand back and watch you run circles around us for six months, the next two or three years, waiting for the moment to finally strike,’” Mr. Newsom said. “Struck me as not necessarily the best advice.”
Mr. Newsom also called his visit during the coronavirus pandemic to the French Laundry, one of the country’s most expensive restaurants, the “dumbest bonehead move of my life,” adding, “Own it, move on, grow up.” That outing, which infuriated Californians who were living under rules discouraging gatherings, helped prompt a recall election in 2021 in which Mr. Newsom prevailed.
The governor also said that the only time he thought Joseph R. Biden Jr. had experienced any “mental decline” during his aborted 2024 campaign was during a Hollywood fund-raiser that preceded his disastrous debate performance. Several allies of Mr. Biden, including the actor George Clooney, said later that the fund-raiser had made them newly worried about the president’s vigor.
“I saw a different person,” Mr. Newsom said. “That was the one time.”
