The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, in an appearance in the first-in-the-nation presidential primary state of New Hampshire, reiterated his use of the term "apartheid" to describe Israel and did not correct his chosen interviewer, who falsely claimed "every expert" has described Israel's actions in Gaza as "genocide."
Newsom, who has opposed a proposed one-time confiscation of billionaire wealth in California, also spoke positively about a plan by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) for an annual 5 percent wealth tax on billionaires. The plan's supporters claim it would be a $4.4 trillion tax increase over 10 years.
The combination of taxing the rich and demonizing Israel made it look like Newsom is trying to win the presidency in 2028, or at least the Democratic nomination, by copying the tactics of Zohran Mamdani, who won election in 2025 as mayor of New York City in part with those messages. Just as Mamdani used Jews, including Sanders, New York City politician Brad Lander, and Mandy Patinkin, as accomplices for his demonization of the Jewish state, Newsom attributed the apartheid term to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman: "I was specifically referring to a Tom Friedman column last week." That's ridiculous, because Friedman has been writing Israel apartheid columns since 2002. Newsom has only joined the smear campaign now that he thinks it's convenient for his presidential fantasies.
Speaking at an event in Portsmouth, Newsom hotly denounced Israel and its elected prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Newsom, who scored 960 on the SAT, described Netanyahu, who has two degrees from MIT and has served six times as prime minister in Israel's highly competitive and tumultuous democracy, as "stupid."
"I'm very angry with what he is doing and why he is doing it," Newsom said of Netanyahu. Newsom added, in reference to the U.S.-Israel military action against Iran, that "I'm very angry about this war." He claimed U.S. money was being spent on the war against Iran instead of Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps. Newsom has made that criticism only about the military action against Iran, not about aid to Ukraine, to which he bragged last month about California having sent billions of dollars.
Newsom likened his approach in smearing the Jewish state while it is under Iranian missile and drone attack to his decision, as mayor of San Francisco in 2004, to approve same-sex marriages—a matter of "values and beliefs."
On taxes, in response to a question about the Sanders-Khanna wealth tax, Newsom said, "The imbalance between the rich and the poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. … Bernie Sanders has been absolutely right about this for decades and decades. There's no question about it." Newsom said there is a stronger case for a wealth tax at the national level than at the state level, where it's easier for rich people to move away. "My state of mind absolutely is aligned with this notion that we're going to have to substantively address this wealth disparity in a much more progressive manner, and look at it from the"—here he either says "prism" or "prison," I'm not sure, maybe he said "prison" and meant "prism" and it was a Freudian slip about turning America into a prison that people are imprisoned in and can't leave without paying confiscatory taxes—"nationally, where we're able to capture, I think, a stronger rationale, as opposed to this race to the bottom or the top in each state competing as it relates to the prospects, you're going to lose population. So that's where my position is on this topic." He apparently doesn't think it possible for the wealthy to leave the country.
Newsom's strained attempt to justify his Israel-bashing by naming Jews with whom he is vaguely associated, in "some of my best friends are…" fashion, was not limited to Friedman, who was notoriously a member of a pro-PLO cell even as a student at Brandeis University in 1974, as documented in the 1993 book With Friends Like These: The Jewish Critics of Israel, edited by Edward Alexander. Said Newsom, "Many members of my family are Jewish." Newsom loves to talk about his single mother and alleged hardscrabble upbringing, but he's not beyond name-dropping his rich and famous Jewish relatives when it's convenient. "My aunt, Cindy, was married to Ed Asner, the actor, for years and years and years," he said. "And she's a big part of this book as well. My uncle, Paul Scheer, and you know, first time I went to Israel with him and family. And so I grew up JCC camps every summer, Camp Tawonga, which is my favorite camp. And so I was very much part of the, particularly in the Bay Area of San Francisco, Jewish community."
The tell there is the "was." He "was" part of that community, or thought he was, but he is not anymore. He doesn't want to be. Last month Newsom said he never had and never would take any money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the main pro-Israel lobby. As for Ed Asner, he is sort of a Mandy Patinkin-like figure. He appears very Jewish to non-Jews, but as Asner, who died in 2021, explained in a 2018 oral history interview with the Yiddish Book Center… well, here is the interview:
"How did you feel about Israel in '48?"
Asner: "Oh, I was all gung-ho. Very gung-ho, yeah. Carried guilt that I hadn't dropped everything and joined up. But then, over the years, of course, that's changed. … Israel has become the New York Jews, as far as I'm concerned, and that Jewry is being split into two: the liberals of America and the apartheid creatures of Israel who no longer allow conversions, I guess."
Asner also served for a time on an advisory board of the virulently anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace. So Newsom's invocation of Asner's name is not reassuring to anyone who seriously cares about this stuff; like "Jewish Voice for Peace" itself, like the Jews for Mamdani, it's intended as a permission structure for people to engage in activities that advance the destruction of the Jewish state while deceiving themselves that what they are doing is not hateful anti-Jewish bigotry.
There may be some complicated political calculation whereby Newsom or his team may think this makes sense. They could figure Kamala Harris is tainted by association with Biden's Gaza "genocide" and that pro-Israel voters and donors will be with Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, or former Chicago mayor, former White House chief of staff, former ambassador to Japan, and former congressman Rahm Emanuel, or Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, so Newsom might as well seize the anti-Israel opportunity before Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or someone else captures it. Whether they think the Democratic primary voting electorate, which is mostly African-American moderates and the old people who elected Joe Biden, is there, or the general election electorate, is another question. It could be that Newsom and his crowd are spending too much time in the left-wing podcast and social media bubble.
Newsom ended the March 5 event in New Hampshire by hugging and warmly praising his interviewer, Jack Cocchiarella ("thank you for doing this, buddy"). Cocchiarella's questions included the false claim that Israel's actions against the Hamas terrorists in Gaza amount to "what every expert has called genocide." For anyone who remembers that, as NH Journal's Michael Graham put it, "Cocchiarella was kicked out of the Dartmouth College Democrats after serious accusations of abusive behavior toward women began circulating," don't worry; at the event-ending hug, Newsom definitely made the first move on Cocchiarella.
Newsom is planning to take a page from Mamdani by appearing on the podcast of Mamdani pal Hasan Piker, whom a Democratic congressman, Ritchie Torres (N.Y.), has described as "the poster child for the post-October 7th outbreak of antisemitism in America." As another podcaster, Jonah Platt, who is from a serious California Jewish family, put it: "Unless the plan is to go on and excoriate Piker for being a vicious anti-Jew hater and anti-American grifter (and I don't think it is), this will be a Rubicon moment for Newsom he will never come back from, and good riddance."
