Ira Stoll writes for the Washington Free Beacon about the California governor’s latest transformation.
The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, a likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, is abandoning his support for Israel now that he thinks it has become politically inconvenient.
That’s the takeaway from Newsom’s March 3, 2026, book-promotion appearance with two former aides to President Barack Obama, Tommy Vietor and Jon Favreau, who have a podcast known for hostility to Israel. Asked about the military action against Iran that Israel and the United States are jointly waging, Newsom had nothing at all positive to say about it. Instead of saying a single critical word about Iran—the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, which has killed 35,000 pro-democracy protesters this year, which oppresses women and gays, and which has launched assassination attempts and cyberattacks against America while stoking unrest on U.S. college campuses—Newsom denounced Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for dragging America into war.
“The issue of Bibi is interesting because he’s got his own domestic issues. He’s trying to stay out of jail,” Newsom said. “He’s got an election coming up. He’s potentially on the ropes. He’s got folks, the hard line, that want to annex the West Bank. I mean, [Thomas] Friedman and others are talking about it, appropriately, as sort of an apartheid state. They couldn’t even—I mean, we’re talking about regime change?—for two years, they haven’t even been able to solve the Hamas question in Israel. So this is, I mean, you know, I want to be careful here, but you know, in so many ways, that influence in the context of the conversation of where Trump ultimately landed on this is pretty damn self-evident.”
Newsom said the United States should “reconsider” its military support for Israel. “You just got to reconsider the whole thing,” he said, claiming, not particularly credibly, “it breaks my heart.”
“My entire life, I felt dumb,” Newsom said in the appearance. If he felt dumb before, he deserves to feel even dumber now, especially if he thinks Americans won’t see through his self-serving shape-shifting.
