The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, a likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, is abandoning his support for Israel now that he thinks it has become politically inconvenient.
That’s the takeaway from Newsom’s March 3, 2026, book-promotion appearance with two former aides to President Barack Obama, Tommy Vietor and Jon Favreau, who have a podcast known for hostility to Israel. Asked about the military action against Iran that Israel and the United States are jointly waging, Newsom had nothing at all positive to say about it. Instead of saying a single critical word about Iran—the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, which has killed 35,000 pro-democracy protesters this year, which oppresses women and gays, and which has launched assassination attempts and cyberattacks against America while stoking unrest on U.S. college campuses—Newsom denounced Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for dragging America into war.
“The issue of Bibi is interesting because he’s got his own domestic issues. He’s trying to stay out of jail,” Newsom said. “He’s got an election coming up. He’s potentially on the ropes. He’s got folks, the hard line, that want to annex the West Bank. I mean, [Thomas] Friedman and others are talking about it, appropriately, as sort of an apartheid state. They couldn’t even—I mean, we’re talking about regime change?—for two years, they haven’t even been able to solve the Hamas question in Israel. So this is, I mean, you know, I want to be careful here, but you know, in so many ways, that influence in the context of the conversation of where Trump ultimately landed on this is pretty damn self-evident.”
Newsom said the United States should “reconsider” its military support for Israel. “You just got to reconsider the whole thing,” he said, claiming, not particularly credibly, “it breaks my heart.”
“My entire life, I felt dumb,” Newsom said in the appearance. If he felt dumb before, he deserves to feel even dumber now, especially if he thinks Americans won’t see through his self-serving shape-shifting. Newsom traveled to Israel on October 20, 2023, and spoke of “the extraordinary people I just met today in Israel” and “the deep connections between my home state and this country.” In 2020, he also vetoed a California K-12 ethnic studies mandate amid concerns voiced by Jewish groups and other critics that the mandate could promote anti-Semitism.
Some analysts viewed the remarks as a sign of how anti-Israel forces have taken over the Democratic Party.
Jonathan Greenberg, who worked from 2006 to 2011 for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, commented, “The concern here isn’t Newsom. He’s entirely selfish and believes in nothing. The concern here for Jewish Democrats is that he’s an accomplished windsock. And this is his read on the wind.”
A former AIPAC spokesman, Josh Block, said, “Correct — he is just giving the Democratic Party voters what he thinks they want.”
“Mr. Newsom is gambling that betting against Israel and America is a winning political strategy for what is left of the party of Truman,” said a New York Sun editorial headlined “Gavin Newsom Goes to War — Against Israel.”
A statement from Newsom on February 28, 2026 had criticized the war as unjustified and illegal while also saying, “the corrupt and repressive Iranian regime must never have nuclear weapons. The leadership of Iran must go.” That messaging was absent from the March 3 book tour appearance.
The book tour will be Newsom’s first extended national exposure for some potential 2028 voters. It includes stops in the early presidential primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina. In his appearance with Vietor and Favreau, he seemed to want to talk more about himself than about any concrete achievements he has delivered for the state of California. The state suffers from crime, poverty, homelessness, and high prices. At one point Newsom likened his physical appearance to the actor Pierce Brosnan, known for television appearances as the character Remington Steele and for a stint as James Bond in the movie series. At another point he spoke about what he described as a “pretty severe learning disability that still marks who I am today, a lot of my anxieties, my insecurities.” He praised the doctor who helped with his mother’s physician-assisted suicide. He said his father had walked out on his mother and explained why, not to him directly, but to an oral history interviewer for the University of California’s Bancroft Library.
He described “Murdoch Inc.”— an apparent reference to Fox and News Corp., whose media holdings include the Fox News Channel and Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal—as “Pravda,” the organ of the Communist Party in the murderous Soviet totalitarian state. He singled out Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity by name, which is really despicable, because both of them hate Soviet Communism. Newsom’s book publisher is a division of Bertelsmann, a German company that competes with some businesses controlled by Rupert Murdoch and his family.
Newsom recalled during the appearance, “my mom was so insistent that I never get into politics.” On the basis of this particular appearance, at least, it might have been better for the country if Newsom had taken his mother’s advice.
It’s very early in the 2028 presidential race. My own sense of it—I could be wrong—is that by the time voters decide the Democratic nomination, Israel and Iran politics may not be particularly high on the agenda of typical Democratic primary voters, and that, to the extent national security and foreign policy figure at all in the race, some political advantages will accrue to a candidate not vulnerable to being portrayed as an extremist Israel-hating terrorist-sympathizer. On the substance of it, if the operation against Iran winds up as a success, a candidate running against Newsom could fault him as mistaken for having opposed it, and say, to the extent Israel helped win it, it should be thanked. That anti-Newsom candidate could point out that by using the “apartheid” slur unwarrantedly against Israel, Newsom is falling into precisely the “Zionism-is-racism” lie advanced by Pravda and its Soviet Communist sponsor. And that candidate might denounce Newsom for his spinelessness. Israeli and American troops and civilians across the Middle East and brave Iranian protesters are putting their lives on the line to prevent a sick and evil radical theocratic regime from threatening civilization with missiles and nuclear weapons. And Mr. Handsome Genius Conspiracy Theorist from California says what’s really driving U.S. government decisionmaking is Israeli electoral politics rather than the pace of Iran’s missile program and its slaughter of 35,000 protesters?
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