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Newsom Looks Small in the Face of a Big War
The front-runner for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination seems congenitally incapable of rising above his tribe. (Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
He’s quick to blame Israel and Trump at every turn, but spares few harsh words for the mullahs who want Americans dead.
By Peter Savodnik
03.05.26 — U.S. Politics
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It was unsettling to watch California governor Gavin Newsom on Monday spouting off a rejiggered blood libel this week, and not simply because Democrats have mostly succumbed to a fashionable Jew hate.

“We have to reconcile why our bombs were used, or Israeli bombs were used, to kill children—young girls—at a school, and what the imminent threat was,” Newsom said at a press conference meant to slam Donald Trump’s war on Iran.

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Peter Savodnik
Peter Savodnik is senior editor at The Free Press. Previously, he wrote for Vanity Fair as well as GQ, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Wired, and other publications, reporting from the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, South Asia, and across the United States. His book, The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union, was published in 2013.
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Israel
Democrats
What's Next For The Democrats
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