Gavin Newsom: “Sort Of”
This is an entirely fictional creative work. It does not represent the actual thoughts, words, or views of any real person. This is satire and literary fiction for entertainment purposes.
March 25, 2026
Gavin Newsom — Governor of California and likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidate
Sort Of
March 25, 2026
Late. Jen already asleep. Dutch is snoring at the foot of the bed and I'm in the kitchen with the lights too bright, drinking sparkling water out of a wine glass because apparently that's who I am now.
Okay. So the Politico thing dropped and I've been watching the reactions roll in all day. The signal-to-noise is about what you'd expect. Progressive Twitter thinks I capitulated. The donor calls — and there have been calls, plural, starting at 6:45 this morning — suggest I didn't capitulate enough. Haim was gracious but you could hear the frost. That very specific pause he does where he's letting you know he's choosing not to say the thing. I know that pause. I've used that pause.
Here's what I keep coming back to: I said "sort of." I literally qualified it. Sort of an apartheid state. And the word that got clipped, the word that disappeared from every headline, every Chyron, every furious email — "sort of." Two words that were doing all the work and nobody heard them. That's on me. That's — look, I know how media works. I've been doing this long enough. You don't get to complain that people only heard the grenade and not the pin.
But I also can't sit here and pretend I don't believe what I believe. I've been to the West Bank. I've seen the roads. The checkpoints. I've talked to people — Israeli peace activists, Palestinian business owners, American rabbis — who use that word without flinching. Human Rights Watch uses it. B'Tselem uses it. This isn't some fringe vocabulary. And if Netanyahu goes full annexation, which every signal suggests he will, then the word isn't going away. It's going to be the ONLY word.
So what I tried to do today was thread it. Put it in their mouths instead of mine. "A word you may hear others use." Classic. Really elegant, Gavin. You took the truest thing you've said in two years and laundered it into a hypothetical attributed to unnamed future speakers. Jen would say I'm being too hard on myself. She'd say the interview was disciplined. She always says "disciplined" when she means "careful" when she means "less than honest."
The Zionist question. God. That one sat there like a land mine and I just — I went with "revere." Revere. Like I'm talking about a national park. Which, fine, it threaded the needle but it also kind of didn't, because everyone in that donor world hears what you DON'T say, and what I didn't say was "yes." And everyone on the progressive side heard me refuse to say "no." So now I'm the guy who reveres Israel. Great. Very specific. Very presidential.
Ate half a burrito from the fridge around 4 that was probably two days old. Couldn't taste it. Sean called from DC and said the early read from the Hill is that I "managed" it. Managed. That's the word we use when nobody's happy but nobody's organizing against you yet.
The thing I keep not saying to anyone, the thing I won't even say to Jen, is that I wasn't wrong on Pod Save America. I was just early. Or I was right but out of position. Which in politics is the same as being wrong but worse because you know it and you have to eat it anyway.
I think about Obama. How he waited. How he let the moment come to him. I don't have that patience. I never have. It's the thing that makes me good at governing and potentially fatal at campaigning. I see the shape of something and I just — I say it. And then I spend three weeks explaining what I meant.
Two years and eight months to Iowa. If there's an Iowa. If the whole map doesn't shift.
Need to sleep. Need to stop looking at my phone. Need to figure out whether "revere" is going to hold or whether I just
AFTER THE CAMERAS is a daily publication of speculative psychological fiction. Each entry imagines the private thoughts of a public figure on the day's biggest story. No entry represents real thoughts, statements, or beliefs of any individual. All internal monologue, emotional reactions, and private observations are entirely invented. External events referenced are real; inner experiences are fictional. All content is created for entertainment purposes only.