“Many of us sacrificed our careers trying to take these people on and Newsom’s trying to make a career with them.”
That was former Republican U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger reacting to California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom having the Trump White House’s onetime chief strategist Steve Bannon on his podcast today. Though a Republican, Kinzinger served on the the House Committee on the Jan. 6 Attack and has been vocal in his opposition to Trump’s claims of voter fraud and attempts to overturn the results.
Newsom has used his new podcast to engage with far Right figures, having unusually friendly conversations with his first two guests, Michael Savage and Charlie Kirk, as well as with Bannon this week. In a world that could use more bipartisanship, that kind of amity is arguably a good thing. But many, like Kinzinger, saw the Bannon interview as a betrayal.
“Bannon is the author of this chaos we’re seeing right now,” Kinzinger said in a social media post. “Bannon is the one that that said flood the zone with sh*t. Bannon is the one who has basically authored where we are and what Donald Trump wants.”
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He also called the Bannon chat “unforgivable and insane.”
And Kinzinger wasn’t the only one.
CNN this evening had a panel discussion that was chyroned “Liberals Furious With Gavin Newsom For Giving Steve Bannon A Platform.” The dustup was also later revisited on the network’s Laura Coates Live. Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell (CA) told Coates he also once interviewed Bannon, but it was for a very different purpose: to find out what the former White House staffer knew about Trump’s dealings with Russia.
Swalwell called Newsom “fearless” for going on Sean Hannity’s show and debating Ron DeSantis.
“I just think we can learn a lot more from people who are not Steve Bannon or Charlie Kirk,” he said. “Steve Bannon’s an arsonist who doesn’t contribute to the dialog.”
Newsom, for his part, seemed to enjoy his 50-plus minute conversation with Bannon. The duo seemed to find some common ground in verbal opposition to oligarchs and a conversation in which Newsom questioned Elon Musk’s actions with DOGE before flattering Bannon, “He’s a little scared of you, isn’t he?”
The New York Times today observed, “The tenor with Mr. Bannon was set early on, when Mr. Newsom did not push back on his guest’s repeated false claims that President Trump won the 2020 election. The governor does not appear to view the discussions as fact-checking sessions: He interjected only intermittently, including when Mr. Bannon referred to Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as “Pocahontas.’”
You can watch the full podcast below.