Democratic megadonor John Morgan has a message for Gavin Newsom: copying the style of the man your party despises is not the path to the White House. Morgan, the founder and president of Morgan & Morgan, appeared on Monday's "CUOMO" show to unload on the California governor's emerging 2028 presidential strategy, calling it fundamentally misguided.
The core problem, according to Morgan, is that Newsom has decided to mirror the very political combativeness Democrats claim to oppose. Morgan didn't mince words:
He decided to be the Democratic version of Donald Trump.
And then came the full picture of what that looks like in practice:
You want to be mean? I'll be mean. You want to be nasty? I'll be nasty. You want to be an a-hole? I'll be an a-hole. I told her, and I believe this. I think that's a bad strategy.
Morgan believes voters will have had enough of that energy by 2028. "I think that by the time we get to 2028, America is gonna be sick of meanness and chaos and that type of banter," he said, adding that Newsom has calculated the approach "gets him some money."
So the strategy is about fundraising, not governing. That tracks.
The most damaging part of Morgan's critique wasn't about tone. It was about substance. Newsom's problem isn't just that he's adopted a combative posture. It's that the posture is supposed to distract from a California record that sits miles to the left of the average American voter.
According to NewsNation, Morgan went straight for specifics. He pointed to Newsom's support for $350,000 in reparations for each African American, his positions on transgender athletes in swimming, and the broader progressive agenda that defined his governorship. For most politicians, a gubernatorial record is a launching pad. For Newsom, Morgan argued, it's an anchor.
All of a sudden, he's gonna Etch-a-Sketch it. How's he gonna deal with his transgender swimming positions and everything that brought him there? Usually, when you're a governor, that's an asset. His problem is his record is far, far left and far, far woke.
The Etch-a-Sketch metaphor is apt. Newsom governed California as a progressive champion. Now he apparently wants to shake the screen clean and present himself as a tough-talking moderate fighter. Morgan sees right through it, and he's a Democrat saying this.
Newsom did recently secure one significant prize: an endorsement from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of the most influential figures in the Democratic Party with one of its most powerful donor networks. The two Democrats are also related by marriage.
That endorsement matters inside the party apparatus. It matters for fundraising. What it doesn't do is solve the fundamental problem Morgan identified. Pelosi's blessing doesn't rewrite Newsom's Sacramento record. It doesn't make voters in Pennsylvania or Michigan forget that California under Newsom became the national symbol of progressive overreach.
Meanwhile, Newsom has reportedly been traveling through Europe, trying to shore up his credentials with core Democratic voters by discussing climate policy and the Ukraine-Russia negotiations. A California governor touring European capitals to talk about geopolitics while his state's problems fester. The priorities speak for themselves.
There's a deeper irony Morgan's critique exposes, even if he didn't intend it. Democrats spent years insisting that combative, unapologetic politics was a threat to democracy itself. They built an entire political identity around the idea that a certain style of leadership was uniquely dangerous to American institutions.
Now their leading 2028 contender has adopted that exact style, and the party's donor class is funding it. The principle was never about the style. It was about who was using it.
Morgan, to his credit, at least recognizes the contradiction. Most of the Democratic establishment won't. They'll cheer Newsom's combativeness as "fighting back" while simultaneously claiming the same posture from the other side is authoritarian. The inconsistency is the point. It always has been.
But Morgan's sharpest insight is the simplest one. Newsom's problem isn't what he says now. It's what he did then. He governed from the far left. He embraced every progressive cause that polled well in San Francisco and nowhere else. And now he wants to pretend none of it happened.
Morgan summed it up in six words:
He's gonna have to run from his woke.
Good luck with that.