Gavin Newsom, governor of uber-liberal California, broke ranks with fellow Democrats on Thursday morning by declaring that it was unfair that transgender athletes could take part it women’s sport.

His bold intervention will likely trigger a new reckoning on the left. 

It came during the launch of his new podcast, when he sat down with Trump ally and MAGA lord Charlie Kirk, at a time when a defeated Democratic Party is trying to find its feet amid the nations culture wars.

Kirk asks him: ‘Would you say no men in female sports?’

‘Well, I think it’s an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that,’ Newsom responds. ‘It is an issue of fairness. It’s deeply unfair.’

Kirk challenged him to call out the case of AB Hernandez, a high school trans athlete dominating women’s long jump and triple jump in California.

Newsom avoided that case but said he agreed with Kirk’s overall stance that it was unfair for women to compete with an athlete born a man. 

But he went on to say that it was important to ensure that vulnerable communities were protected.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Trump ally Charlie Kirk recorded an hour-long conversation for Newsom’s new podcast, released Thursday morning

Trans athlete AB Hernandez won triple and high jump events by huge distances on Saturday

‘There’s also humility and grace … that these poor people are more likely to commit suicide, have anxiety and depression, and the way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is an issue that I have a hard time with as well,’ he said. 

‘So both things I can hold in my hand. How can we address this issue with the kind of decency that I think you know is inherent in you, but not always expressed on the issue?’

Newsom is widely expected to run for president in 2028. And he has shown a willingness to engage with conservatives and appear on Fox News as he dissects the wreckage of Democrats’ 2024 election campaign.

In the first episode of his podcast he admitted that Democrats simply could not compete with the reach of Trump and Elon Musk right now. 

‘We’re toast,’ he said. 

His new show is designed to bring him together with people on the opposing side. And he promised to interview architects of the MAGA movement.

‘This is going to be anything but the ordinary politician podcast,’ he said. ‘I’m going to be talking to people directly that i disagree with, as well as people I look up to.’  

But supporters and even his own staff will be shocked at how much they agreed on an issue that was weaponized bu Donald Trump and his supporters to show how liberal Democrats had lost the plot.

Newsom said that his friends had raised the issue of fairness in sport, and as a father of four, including two girls, he understood the problem 

‘Even my own friend cohort … people say: What the hell is going on, why aren’t you calling this out? When did this happen?’ he said.

California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a new podcast he’s launching – ‘This Is Gavin Newsom’

Asking questions about the fairness of transgender athletes should not be off limits, he said: ‘We have to own it.’ 

Public opinion has hardened on the issue.

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that two thirds of American adults favor or strongly favor laws require trans athletes to compete on teams that match their birth sex. 

On Tuesday it provided Trump with one of his biggest applause lines when he announced he had signed an executive order to ban men from playing in women’s sports. 

During the closing weeks of the 2024 campaign, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris struggled to respond to her stance on transgender rights.

Now, with Republicans in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, party thinkers are trying to work out how to come back from Trump’s big win in the culture wars.

Newsom discussed some of those big issues with Kirk, a firebrand activist and head of Turning Point USA who is known for his take-no-prisoners approach.

He is now a key figure in Trump Land, sitting in on crucial meetings at Mar-a-Lago while the incoming president built his administration at the end of last year.

At times he seemed to school Newsom, who admitted his 13-year-old son was a fan of Kirk’s during their back and forth on what happened in the 2024 election.

‘I’s not just that this was like the Willie Horton ad of 2024 it wasn’t just like a Lee Atwater brilliance,’ he said referencing an ad designed to stoke racial fears or a legendary political strategist, ‘it’s that it reflected truth that the voters felt.’ 

Charlie Kirk has been nicknamed Trump’s ‘youth whisperer’ and his podcast is hugely popular

Newsom met Trump when the president visited California to see wildfire damage and has gone out of his way to appear on Fox News to engage with conservative viewers

‘I appreciate that ,’ said Newsom. 

‘Because voters felt as if their country was slipping away,’ continued Kirk. 

‘Now you have … the Democrats have a choice. You can say to those people, you’re racist, you’re Nazis, you’re fascist, You’re terrible. Or you can listen and be like, why is it that a steel worker in Pittsburgh who’s voted Democrat his entire life is voting for Trump despite all of .. you know … the stuff that’s been thrown at him?’

‘It’s a pattern, and the trans thing is just one of those things.’

Newsom also faces up to the challenge facing Democrats. 

‘We are losing. I feel it’s asymmetric, the asymmetry of Donald Trump and Elon Musk sending out tweets, or you doing social media … to me doing a three minute hit at three o’clock in the afternoon on CNN. I mean, how the hell would we compete?’ he asks.

‘We’re toast.’