“It’s why you’d be a good candidate, you play this game well,” Bill Maher told Gavin Newsom tonight on HBO with the savvy California Governor the latest 2028 contender to appear on Real Time this year. “Your future is not in California, your future is in Iowa,” Maher added later, asking Newsom to “dispense with the bullsh*t” and admit if he is running for President or not.
“We need someone who’s going to be the champion. Are you going to do it or not?”
“I can’t stand the bullshit as well, and I mean that,” the two-term Democrat replied with apparent candor before pivoting. “So, look, but it’s not my purpose or passion. It’s not my meaning. It’s not everything,” Newsom proclaimed.
Newsom then pivoted again to make asking the question a case of missing the point.
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“I deeply respect that the question, but I don’t have any grand plans with respect to that,” the increasingly single-minded Governor told Maher. “I try to do best I can. I also try to be accountable. By the way, you want things to change, you got to change. And that’s what the podcast is about. That’s my recognition of why we’re weak, and I’ve got to call balls and strikes.”
Summary: I’m running for President, but I’ve got a lot of rebranding to do before I make it official.
“You look great, you always do,” Maher gushed to the handsome Newsom from the drop of their interview. Slipping on his curmudgeon cloak, Maher then proceed stick it to the Governor over the number of inspections the host’s new roof required. Taking the bureaucratic griping and running with it, the poised Newsom turned his focus on the failings of “liberal governance” being “process focused and not outcome focused” for a wider viewership of potential primary and general election voters.
The term limited Newsom has certainly been playing the contrarian the past couple of months with his This is Gavin Newsom podcast, Pulling in high profile guests from MAGAland’s Charlie Kirk and Steven Bannon to progressives like 2024 VP candidate Gov Tim Waltz of Minnesota and NYT columnist Ezra Klein, the Golden State governor’s podcast has attracted media attention, profuse praise and scathing criticism – often from the same circles.
Which is exactly what the blatantly ambitious and media divining rod two-term Democrat is aiming for – to be in the conversation with his conversations. To that, noting that he is the latest Democrat to audition for the party faithful and moderation Republicans on Maher’s show, Newsom named dropped a potential rival and past Real Time guest, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro tonight as if to offer a passive agressive old skool hip hop dis.
More to the point, offering Maher some love for his upcoming Kid Rock orchestrated DC visit with Trump, Newsom tuned up the volume on his new-ish chorus that Democrats need to be rooted in the real world in the Trump 2.0 era.
“I’m serious about this, it’s not zero sum,” he said, playing political music to Maher’s ears “We’re not winning right now, he won by 2.3 million votes. We lost the House and the Senate, and we’re in a panic. I get it for good reasons. This guy’s not screwing around, but we need to own our mistakes, we need to own what’s wrong with our party.”
After Maher’s monologue and a lame screen time joke was interrupted by a “rude as shit” audience member taking photos in studios, Real Time swung form the West Coast to the East Coast later in the show tonight After Maher’s sit-down with Newsom, the episode’s panel featured New York Times opinion writer John McWhorter and New York Post columnist Rikki Schlott
At the top of the show, Maher ripped the “idiots” on the National Security team for their extremely ill-consider a.k.a. moronic move to discussing a military attack earlier this month on the Houthis plugging up shipping lanes in the Middle East. Sitting down with the Whorter and Schlott, the Real Time frontman went harder. Looks like Pete Hegseth picked the wrong week to quit drinking,” he deadpanned of the faceplanting and inexperienced Defense Secretary who put classified info on the Signal app chat, then denied it and then said the hardware, timing and more were just “attack plans” and no big deal.
No wonder, Maher at the end of the show went after Trump, his sycophantic cabinet and the MAGA crowd for threatening our former closest ally Canada and openly talking about a third term.
“There’s no fuzz on it, Presidents get two terms,” Maher sternly said. “This is the moment when Rome stops being a Republic,” he concluded telling Republicans to “grow a pair.”
After tonight, Real Time with Bill Maher is off until April 11.