Kara Swisher called Gavin Newsom out on his interview with Steve Bannon and other hardcore right-wingers, revealing that she texted him this week to ask, “What are you doing?”
On Thursday’s The View, the popular podcast host said she actually used “other words” that were harsher, as she criticized the California governor for being “too easy” on Bannon. “When he was doing the DeSantis thing, I thought that was good because they’re having a good debate going back and forth, and it was based in fact,” she explained of Newsom’s previous public debates with Republicans. “If you don’t push back on lies, they exist.”
The Democratic governor is using his podcast “This Is Gavin Newsom” to have conversations with prominent MAGA figures, including Turning Points USA’s Charlie Kirk, in an effort to find common ground—but Swisher said that he missed the mark with the Bannon discussion.
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“It’s not the platforming, because I don’t believe in that,” she continued, “You should be talking to everybody, including Steve Bannon, he’s very powerful. But you have to push back and say ‘That’s a lie, that’s a lie.’ It was a little too chummy.”
Newsom’s conversation with Donald Trump’s former White House advisor was surprisingly friendly, and the pair seemed to find the strongest synergy in their shared disdain for Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Swisher said it was a missed opportunity for a deeper conversation that would have been more productive. “He didn’t push back, and so what’s the use of having this dialogue, if you’re going to not have a real dialogue, a real disagreement based in fact?” she asked Thursday.
The hosts asked Swisher—whose history with Newsom dates back to his marriage to Donald Trump Jr.‘s ex Kimberly Guilfoyle—why she thinks he took such a different tone with Bannon. Though she admitted she didn’t really know, she offered one theory. “I think it’s because, he politically wants to have MAGA on his side a little bit,” she said, so that “when he goes to run, they won’t attack him as much.”
