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Newsom Mocked After Throwing Tantrum After VP Vance, Joe Rogan Riffed On California

Updated: POLITICS

Gavin Newsom has a 2028 presidential campaign to run, a DOJ investigation to manage, missing tax returns to explain, and a state with 13 million pounds of waste recently removed from a single park. His response to all of it Tuesday morning was to post on X calling Joe Rogan a coward.

This is what peak Newsom looks like.

JD Vance appeared on Rogan’s podcast for nearly three hours Monday — a wide-ranging conversation that circled back to California multiple times. Both men said they loved the state. Both men said Democratic policies had destroyed it. Rogan talked about friends stuck in Los Angeles who can’t leave. Vance said America shouldn’t abandon California because it’s too core to the national identity. “Politics ruined it,” Rogan said flatly:

Joe Rogan and Vice President JD Vance spent nearly 20 minutes talking about California in a recent podcast episode, oscillating between how much they love the state and how much it’s “going further and further down the toilet.” [….]

The duo spent almost three hours in a wide-ranging conversation largely centered on politics, circling back to California several times, a state where they’ve both lived. Rogan and Vance each talked about how much they admired the state but how it’s been ruined by politics, homelessness, taxes, corruption and a high cost of living.

WATCH:

Newsom’s response to a genuine, hours-long conversation about the state he governs was a single juvenile post: “Joe Rogan is too chicken to have me on — so he and JD Vance spent three hours in their California Derangement Syndrome safe space. How cute!”

Let’s examine this carefully. Rogan previously called Newsom a “conman” and a “cardboard cutout of a person” — on the record, publicly, with his full chest. That’s not the behavior of a man afraid of Gavin Newsom. That’s a man who has already taken Newsom’s measure and rendered his verdict. The idea that Rogan is “too chicken” to interview California’s governor isn’t just implausible. It’s the kind of thing you say when you can’t actually address what was said about you and need to change the subject fast.

And what was said about California? That it’s going down the toilet. That homelessness, taxes, corruption, and cost of living have gutted a state that was once the envy of the world. That people are leaving. That politics — specifically, Democratic politics — ruined it.

Newsom’s term for this observable reality is “California Derangement Syndrome.” Which is convenient, because calling accurate criticism a mental disorder is considerably easier than addressing it. The 13 million pounds of waste removed from MacArthur Park isn’t derangement syndrome. The tent cities aren’t derangement syndrome. The people moving to Texas and Arizona and Florida by the hundreds of thousands aren’t deranged — they’re responding rationally to conditions Newsom’s administration has presided over for years.

One X user captured the moment perfectly: “He’s busy calling Joe Rogan a chicken right now. He doesn’t have time for fires.”

Another pointed out that almost a year ago, Newsom posted that he was “moving on.” He has not moved on. He is visibly, actively, obsessively not moving on — posting juvenile taunts at a podcaster while under federal criminal investigation, with his tax returns still missing and his political future depending entirely on California’s voters forgetting what the state looked like before he got there.

Insulting Joe Rogan is probably the worst possible campaign strategy for a man who needs to reach exactly the voters Rogan reaches. Which tells you everything about how panicked Newsom actually is.