Gavin Newsom has laugh at the expense of Fox News: “We put a mirror up to Trump and the absurdity of what’s going on”

The concept of free speech and humor has been put to the test recently in the United States with the Trump administration directly threatening broadcasters about late night TV show hosts making fun of the 47th president. While CBS cited financial reasons, it is widely speculated that Stephen Colbert’s show was a victim of this pressure in order to get approval for the merger of Skydance Media and Paramount Global, the network’s parent company, from Trump’s FCC.

The Late Show comedian hosted the Governor of California on Tuesday where Gavin Newsom shared the inspiration behind his parody campaign of Trump and that he “never imagined it would break through like it has.”

“We thought we’d have some fun with it”

Colbert inquired about Newsom’s new communication strategy that the host jokingly called “being interesting,” which has drawn viral attention across social media, and what the impetus was behind it. “The strategy is inspiration, desperation. The two driving forces of life,” explain the governor.

“Everything we were doing to try to break through wasn’t working any more. And so we decided to do something, to your point, novel called humor,” he continued. “And, I gotta say, often times Democrats, we’re a little, you know, we’re not as humorous as we should be. We can be a little stiff. And so, we thought we’d have some fun with it.”

“I never imagined it would break through like it has and get under the skin of the president of the United States. And some of my friends,” said Newsom. When asked which ones, the governor responded, “You know, Pravda, Fox.”

Outraged Fox hosts must “have some sense of the irony”

The Late Show host then played a clip of Fox political commentator Dana Pirino, who he said “is not too thrilled with you,” in which she says that Newsom needs to stop posting his parodies of Trump. “You are making a fool of yourself. Stop it!” she said.

“She has to have some sense. She’s a very smart person. She has to have some sense of the irony of that,” Colbert commented.

“It wasn’t even Dana. It was Hannity, all these guys. Outraged. Offended. Disgusted,” Newsom answered. “Because we put a mirror up to Trump and the absurdity of what’s going on in this country. The absurdity of Donald Trump. The absurdity of these networks playing into it.”

Newsom’s popularity skyrocketing

Since starting the parody posts mocking Trump this summer, Newsom’s approval rating has soared 18% making him a possible top contender to be the Democrat party’s 2028 presidential nominee.

When asked why he thinks this mockery of Trump “so deeply resonates with people” and “what are people responding to?” Newsom responded, “Just the fight. This has been a tough time.”

“A lot of anxiety, a lot of stress, a lot of folks that honestly just don’t know if we’re going to get our country back. And I get it,” he added.

“This guy is flooding the zone, he’s dominating the narratives, facts don’t seem to matter, and Democrats frankly have had a difficult time pushing back,” he continued.

“And Democrats feel that there’s this weakness that dominates our brand and our party and I think what people appreciate is that we are willing to fight and not only fight symbolically by having a little bit of fun but fight substantively,” he reckoned.

“We’ve 41 lawsuits against this son of a bitch. We are pushing back,” Newsom pointed out. “We’re filling a void on a lot of issues.”

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