{"id":204608,"date":"2026-03-04T23:11:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T23:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/204608\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T23:11:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T23:11:10","slug":"commentary-iran-israel-pet-otters-and-hair-gel-gavin-newsoms-book-tour-stops-in-l-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/204608\/","title":{"rendered":"Commentary: Iran, Israel, pet otters and hair gel. Gavin Newsom’s book tour stops in L.A."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Israel, Iran, ICE, dyslexia, single moms and a pet otter named Potter were among the subjects discussed Tuesday evening at California Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s tour stop in Los Angeles to promote his new book<\/a>, \u201cYoung Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking to a sold-out crowd of around 1,300 at L.A.\u2019s historic Wilshire Ebell Theatre, the hourlong Q&A hosted by Writers Bloc and moderated by \u201cPod Save America\u201d hosts John Favreau and Tommy Vietor was equal parts a get-to-know-the-man-behind-the-mask chat and a timely discussion about challenges facing the country.<\/p>\n

The engaging discussion was clearly geared toward dispelling the image of Newsom as \u201cthat slick guy\u201d (his own words), by covering his journey from an insecure, cocky young man trying to impress those around him to an adult who, through his successes and follies, has become comfortable in his own skin.<\/p>\n

\"Gavin <\/p>\n

Gov. Gavin Newsom and moderators Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor promoting Newsom\u2019s new book, \u201cYoung Man in a Hurry.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Ronaldo Bolanos \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

He described his young, pre-politician self as posing in a suit: \u201cI was thinking I was Pierce Brosnan in \u2018Remington Steele.\u2019 I just discovered hair gel,\u201d Newsom joked. He said in those early years he was often overcompensating for his own feelings of inadequacy as the son of a single mom who struggled to pay the rent. As a kid with learning differences, whose undiagnosed dyslexia put him behind in school. Whose \u201cbroke and broken\u201d father neglected his family while hobnobbing with wealthy San Francisco families, including the heirs of the Getty oil fortune.<\/p>\n

A chatty, relaxed and sometimes free-associating Newsom rarely needed prompting from the moderators when speaking about his childhood, his family\u2019s strange choice of pet (the aforementioned otter) or far more serious matters. He said that Democrats need to \u201cfight fire with fire\u201d and be more \u201cruthless\u201d in their fight to win back the country. <\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s politician-speak was evident in some of his more rehearsed efforts to convince the crowd that he\u2019s a regular guy (he may not have changed many diapers with his first daughter, but he got better at his dad duties with his next three kids). But those instances were matched by unvarnished comments that appeared genuine, and risked alienating some of his base.<\/p>\n

One such instance came early in the conversation, when Newsom was asked about where he stood on President Trump\u2019s new Iran war, and the administration\u2019s changing rationales on why it launched the military operation without consulting Congress. <\/p>\n

\u201c[The Trump administration\u2019s] first rationale was we\u2019ve got to make sure that they\u2019re not armed with nuclear [weapons]. But I thought that was resolved, that we had completely \u2018obliterated\u2019 it,\u201d Newsom said, using Trump\u2019s claims against him. \u201cThen maybe that wasn\u2019t the case, so now it\u2019s about their missiles, and they can perhaps hit the United States, and then it\u2019s wait, that\u2019s a decade plus away. So that\u2019s BS. Then it\u2019s about their militias, it\u2019s about their proxy. Then it\u2019s no, it\u2019s about their navy. And then no, it\u2019s a response to the likelihood that Israel was going to [go in] so we had to go in ourselves. God help us \u2026 this is Keystone Cops.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newsom was then asked if the United States should perhaps consider rethinking its military support for Israel, and he said that would be reasonable. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue of Bibi [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] is interesting because he\u2019s got his own domestic issues,\u201d Newsom said. \u201cHe\u2019s trying to stay out of jail. He\u2019s got an election coming up. I mean, to say this is in America\u2019s interest, at a time when affordability is at crisis levels, where you had an administration who literally got elected saying this is exactly the opposite of what they would ever consider doing. The fact that we are in this now, regional war.\u2026\u201d <\/p>\n

He also said Netanyahu was \u201cpotentially on the ropes. He\u2019s got folks, the hard line, that want to annex the West Bank.\u201d Newsom suggested that some critics have \u201cappropriately\u201d described Israel as sort of an \u201capartheid state.\u201d His comments caused a stir Wednesday from pro-Israel advocates who felt Newsom was turning on their interests. <\/p>\n

But most of the conversation was about the book, and domestic issues. Newsom has been a fierce critic of Trump and his policies, positioning himself as part of the resistance, one of the few high-profile leaders to hit back with policy (Proposition 50)<\/a> and a strong media presence with his podcast, \u201cThis is Gavin Newsom,\u201d and his Trump-trolling social media accounts.<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u201cNothing goes to the heart of who [Donald Trump] is than his press conference yesterday, where he was lamenting [that] four Americans had died,\u201d Newsom said. \u201cHe mentioned them in passing. And then went on, in great detail, about the drapes and the Imperial Palace in the East Wing [of the White House] that he\u2019s building. He talked about [it] with real passion and conviction. It says everything about Donald Trump, the uncertainty in the world, to the fact that we have allies under threat, UAE, we\u2019ve got proxy war with, once again, with Hezbollah and Lebanon. We\u2019ve got all the anxiety as relates to 20% of the world\u2019s oil flow, issues related to oil prices and stocks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Newsom was speaking to an auditorium of blue state supporters, his tour kicked off last week in the South, with stops in Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina. His efforts to relate to his audience were seized upon when, during a conversation with Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, he addressed the audience, saying, \u201cI\u2019m like you,\u201d before bringing up his low SAT scores. He was called out for his comment, which was labeled as racist by critics, particularly those from right leaning media outlets.<\/p>\n

In Los Angeles on Tuesday, he was asked how he felt about the California Democratic Party chair\u2019s recent suggestion that some party candidates drop out of the governor\u2019s race, to avoid a Republican potentially winning. \u201cI confess. I agree. With all the promise and peril that marks this moment in California, the most un-Trump state in America,\u201d we can\u2019t risk a Republican winning, he said.<\/p>\n

The California Highway Patrol and a private security firm deployed officers and agents around the venue for a tight security presence (no bags or purses allowed). On at least three occasions, one or more protesters interrupted the discussion with shouts from the balcony and floor seats, demanding Newsom do something about privatized prisons and the ICE sweeps of immigrants.<\/p>\n

After they were removed by security, Newsom said he understood the \u201cescalation of stress\u201d over the last ten years or so, and defended his record, mentioning he signed the first bill banning private prisons and was a \u201cfierce opponent\u201d of what\u2019s happening on American streets.<\/p>\n

Attendees of the event applauded Newsom\u2019s record, and just about everything else he said. They were, after all, folks who had paid up to $80 a seat to hear the conversation and receive a copy of his book. He walked into the crowd afterward and spent nearly a half hour chatting with audience members, posing for selfies and signing copies of his memoir. Newsom was not in a hurry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel, Iran, ICE, dyslexia, single moms and a pet otter named Potter were among the subjects discussed Tuesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2672,1864,89492,15042,7833,457,94680,19378,340,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,3676,3290,94679,1519,94681],"class_list":["post-204608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-administration","tag-audience","tag-book-tour","tag-conversation","tag-critic","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-hair-gel","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-new-book","tag-newsom","tag-pet-otter","tag-trump","tag-unvarnished-comment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}