MAGA’s latest target: Gavin Newsom’s wife

As early but still premature 2028 polls show Gov. Gavin Newsom emerging as a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, he’s once again become a favorite target of MAGA media figures and online influencers. The San Francisco liberal has long drawn fire from Fox News and the broader right, but as his anticipated campaign nears, the attacks are becoming more focused and personal.

Over the past two weeks, right-wing accounts on X have circulated old clips of Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, speaking at conferences and public events, where she often gives rambling, word-salad answers that seem tailor-made to provoke conservative outrage. Among the videos racking up millions of views are one in which she explains why she identifies as California’s “First Partner,” several where she discusses breaking gender stereotypes with her children or chats about gender more broadly, and one where she recounts a visit to inmates in prison. The selectively edited clips are being used to portray her as out of touch, “woke,” and elitist, and they have quickly spread like wildfire across the MAGA media ecosystem.

Like most things in MAGA media world, those viral X posts quickly turned into TV and radio segments, digital news stories, and podcast episodes, further amplifying their reach. Newsmax, FOX News, The Daily Wire, Daily Caller, Breitbart, The National Review have all run stories attacking Siebel Newsom in the past few weeks. Conservative media’s biggest YouTube personalities and podcasters, including Megyn Kelly, Brett Cooper, Matt Walsh, Isabel Brown, and Patrick Bet-David, have all mentioned Siebel Newsom’s comments on their shows this week. 

As a result of the right-wing media onslaught, Google Search interest in California’s First Partner has skyrocketed, reaching its peak on April 7th. 

This entire cycle is obviously manufactured outrage, and it is more than a little suspicious that several of these clips seem to have originated from an anonymous right-wing video clipping operation on X. 

“Republicans are elevating clips of Jennifer Siebel Newsom right now for a reason. It’s not random—it’s part of a broader effort to define Gavin Newsom early, because they see him as a serious 2028 threat,” Democratic strategist Mike Nellis wrote on Substack. 

For Democrats considering presidential runs in 2028, that broader effort is just beginning. For the right, attacks on Siebel Newsom are a perfectly opportunistic way to ridicule too “woke” progressive values, grow audience and clout among the MAGA grassroots, distract the media from the guy in the White House, and soft-launch anti-Newsom narratives to see what sticks. For the rest of us, it’s a preview of the kind of online campaign politics we’re about to endure for the next two years.

Among both Republicans and Democrats, a majority of people under the age of 50 have an unfavorable opinion of the state of Israel. The country’s shift on Israel is so dramatic that even a major liberal pro-Israel group, J Street, now supports blocking all military aid to the country. 

Over the past week, as Trump's Iran quagmire hit peak chaos, the MAGA media ecosystem cracked wide open. One by one, prominent right-wing influencers and pundits took turns blasting the president—a somewhat rare and genuinely striking public show of dissent from some of Trump’s strongest cheerleaders. 

But how real is it? Is the division being overstated or is it just wishful thinking by liberal media elites like myself? Are these influencers just a bunch of, as Trump would put it, Panicans?

Let's take stock of the friendly fire first. Tucker Carlson delivered a monologue framing Trump's Iran rhetoric as morally corrupt and "evil," urging U.S. officials to defy any orders that could kill civilians. Candace Owens called for Trump to be removed from office via the 25th Amendment. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones called Trump a "dementia risk." Megyn Kelly declared she was "sick of this s---," adding: "you don't just threaten to wipe out an entire civilization." Matt Walsh called on Trump to "end this war in Iran and focus on our country, our people, our future." And that's before you get to Dan Bilzerian, Nick Fuentes, Sneako, Shawn Ryan, and a parade of manosphere-adjacent influencers who helped normalize Trump to a whole generation of young men.

Trump, predictably, did not take the criticism gracefully. In a 482-word Truth Social screed, he called Carlson, Kelly, Owens, and Jones "NUT JOBS, TROUBLEMAKERS" with "Third Rate Podcasts" and "Low IQs," insisting their pushback was "the opposite of MAGA." The responses were equally unhinged: Owens posted Trump's rant and replied, "It may be time to put Grandpa up in a home."

So, is this a real political rupture on the Right, or just a play for these personalities to raise their profiles and demonstrate their independence? A little bit of both, probably. I asked Republican strategist Nathan Brand, who tracks right-wing media via his newsletter, The Brand Brief, for his take. He generally downplayed the drama, arguing that the loudest critics are "infamous for stirring up controversy for their benefit" and represent voices "uniquely outside of the conservative mainstream." The polling generally backs him up: roughly two-thirds of Republicans still express confidence in Trump's handling of Iran, even as broader public trust has eroded, per recent polling. 

For most of these MAGA media personalities, the whole saga reeks of opportunism. In the same episode where Carlson launched into an anti-Trump diatribe, he also admitted he’d likely vote for the President again. Kelly, for her part, told her audience this week that Trump could "drop a nuke" and she'd still vote Republican. That makes me think this is less of a Civil War and more of an attention play for these hosts to stake out their independence and gain long-term credibility with their audiences.

Iowa Democrats, still recovering from a rough few election cycles, are cautiously optimistic that 2026 could be their year to win. Last week, leading elections forecaster the Cook Political Report shifted the Hawkeye State’s gubernatorial race between Democratic State Auditor Rob Sand and GOP Rep. Randy Feenstra from “Lean Republican” to “Toss-up.” This morning, a new polling memo shared with POLITICO showed Sand with a shocking 8-point lead in the race.

Sand’s success at the top of the ticket could also unlock opportunities across the ballot. Iowa also features a potentially competitive U.S. Senate race this fall, as well as a pair of battleground U.S. House races.