Governor Gavin Newsom of California’s barbs at Republicans on X are raising his profile in the 2028 Democratic presidential field. Yet his post of a fake endorsement by a MAGA musician, Robert James Ritchie — known as Kid Rock — is testing whether trolling grows the governor’s brand or exposes him to charges of hypocrisy.
Sunday on X, the Gavin Newsom Press Office shared an AI-generated picture of Mr. Ritchie in the style of Uncle Sam. “Kid Rock wants you to support Gavin Newsom,” the slogan adorning the pointing, star-spangled avatar read. The message garnered about six million views as of this writing.
That post could have come with legal consequences had any of several laws Mr. Newsom signed not run afoul of the First Amendment. Just two weeks ago, a federal judge struck down the governor’s signature Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act which banned AI-generated mudslinging.
The legislative blitz was Mr. Newsom’s response last July to the tech mogul, Elon Musk, retweeting an altered ad featuring Vice President Harris. “Manipulating a voice in an ‘ad’ like this one,” Mr. Newsom said on X, “should be illegal.”
In September, Mr. Newsom tweeted that he’d banned manipulated media. “You can no longer knowingly distribute an ad,” he wrote, “or other election communications that contain materially deceptive content — including deepfakes.”
Last August, Mr. Trump had drawn attention to the issue on Truth Social by sharing an AI parody of another musician, Taylor Swift, wearing a t-shirt that read “Swifties for Trump.” The president wrote, “I accept!” Mr. Newsom added the same line to his tweet featuring Mr. Ritche, signing it GCN.
Because Ms. Swift was known as a critic of Mr. Trump and had endorsed President Biden, there was context that let people in on the joke. “I hate Taylor Swift!” the president wrote on Truth Social after she endorsed Vice President Harris in September.
A key difference in the gambits is that Mr. Trump reposted an image created by a supporter. A wily move for Mr. Newsom would have been to use a covert or “sock puppet” account to spread the AI picture first and retweet it to — as the president sometimes does — throw a rock and hide his hand, keeping his fingerprints off its origins.
Instead, Mr. Newsom took ownership of the fight. He tagged Mr. Ritchie, a high-profile MAGA star who toyed with running for Senate in his native Michigan seven years ago. Many of his 1.3 million followers on X were perplexed by Mr. Newsom’s message, not recognizing it as a satire of the one depicting Ms. Swift.
That confusion drove up engagement for Mr. Newsom’s post, as fans asked Mr. Ritchie to confirm or to deny the apparent endorsement. Late Monday night, Mr. Ritchie — using Mr. Trump’s nickname for the governor — responded on X. “The only support,” he wrote, “Gavin Newscum will ever get out of me is from DEEZ NUTZ.”
Deez Nuts is itself an bit of trolling. In 2016, a 15-year-old Iowan, Brady Olson, launched a satirical presidential campaign under that name and garnered widespread press attention. Of course, Americans weren’t duped into thinking Deez Nuts was a genuine candidate.
They likewise tend to view Mr. Trump as an unreliable narrator, part politician and part stand-up comic. Mr. Newsom, by contrast, has sought to portray himself as a traditional candidate who promises straight talk.
Opponents might leap to provide examples alleging Mr. Newsom’s duplicity, but that proves they already know him. At this phase of his unannounced presidential campaign, the goal is making an introduction to voters who are just forming their opinion of him — and social media is emerging as the governor’s preferred tool for creating that brand.
Mr. Newsom may have the last laugh on MAGA, using the response to the fake endorsement by Mr. Ritchie to build support for combatting computer-generated taunts. Yet social media posts have a way of backfiring, and a candidate who was so indignant about AI deepfakes, might be better off holding the high ground and leaving parodies to the trolls.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
