Newsom needs to man up. This is getting embarrassing.
And now Gavin Newsom broke down crying on camera for a humiliating reason.
The Waterworks Tour: Newsom Cries On Cue for the Cameras
Gavin Newsom, the perpetually camera-ready Governor of California and barely-concealed presidential hopeful, treated a room full of young men to something Wednesday that his constituents rarely see from their governor — emotion. Real or rehearsed, the tears flowed freely as Newsom announced an expansion of the state’s Service Corps, wringing every last drop of political theater from what amounted to a glorified press event.
“Forgive me, this is embarrassing,” he said, dabbing at his eyes on cue. “All the noise, we just need to turn off. Listen to this, this is it.”
He wasn’t finished. “We’re all just sitting there, screaming and yelling at each other, everybody’s getting at each other’s throats, trying to tear everybody down, and how are we going to get out of this? This is it.”
Rich words from a man who has built his entire political identity on tearing people down — Republicans, rivals, and most recently, his old colleague Kamala Harris. The governor who can’t stop screaming about Donald Trump at every book stop apparently found his inner peace just long enough to cry in front of a jobs program backdrop.
10,000 Jobs, One Convenient Executive Order
Strip away the sentiment and what you have is an executive order creating 10,000 paid positions in disaster response, climate action, education, and community service — a program that sounds suspiciously like a taxpayer-funded political prop.
California, a state drowning in debt, a housing crisis it created, and wildfires it can’t manage, is now committing resources to a jobs corps designed, in no small part, to make its governor look good on a national stage.
Newsom, apparently aware of how transparently calculated the whole spectacle appeared, tried to head off the criticism himself. “Look at me, I’m like a kid now,” he told the young men seated behind him — human set dressing for the occasion. He recovered enough to add, “I’m proud of the program and I’m proud of all you guys for being a part of it and for inspiring me. It’s so obvious what we need to do. I’m just deeply proud of this.”
His press release carried the predictable polish: “When we support boys and men, we strengthen families and communities across the board. California is empowering them to find a voice, opportunity and a sense of purpose.”
This from the governor who presided over the state’s catastrophic decline in male educational outcomes, rampant homelessness, and a cost of living that has driven young Californians out of the state by the hundreds of thousands.
2028 Is the Only Number That Matters to Newsom
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Newsom has spent months cozying up to figures like economist Scott Galloway and author Richard Reeves — men who have made careers out of championing struggling young males — not because he suddenly discovered the issue, but because young men handed Trump the 2024 election and Newsom is taking notes. He mentioned the same executive order in his State of the State address. He’s building a brand, and young men are the target demographic.
The tears, the summit, the carefully worded statement about “purpose” — it’s all part of a meticulously staged operation to rehabilitate a governor whose state ranks near the bottom on affordability, livability, and opportunity for the very young men he’s now weeping over. Gavin Newsom doesn’t have a young men problem. He has a California problem — one entirely of his own making — and no amount of on-camera crying is going to fix it.
