The days of the straight-laced, do-no-harm Sacramento press office are over. In recent weeks, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s communications team has gotten extremely extra. Also spicy, zesty, punch-drunk, and, some say, inappropriately mean and personal.
“Forget the southern border, the strongest wall Trump’s ever built is his bronzer line,” reads an Aug. 18 post from the Governor’s Office account on X with a close-up of the president’s face.
“He looks like my lesbian step mom. Great look for her (not for him!),” a Newsom press aide wrote Aug. 14 of Gregory Bovino, the Customs and Border Protection chief for the El Centro sector, who had crashed a Newsom rally that day along with his brown-shirted border guards.
Elsewhere, Newsom and his team have used their X accounts to call Trump a “dictator” and Vice President JD Vance a “dumb dumb,” and referred to top White House aide Stephen Miller as a “fascist cuck” and “Voldemort.” And those are the tame posts. (Don’t even ask about a recent back-and-forth with Kid Rock.)
This tone is no accident, and is part of Newsom’s new identity as chief troller to the nation’s troller-in-chief. The deluge of comedic, sophomoric, and slightly deranged tweeting has little precedent in California politics and is coming at a high-stakes moment for the governor, who’s waging a battle to the death over Congressional redistricting that could make or break his political future.
But given that Newsom has never before trolled to this extent, it begs the question: Who is behind this Dark Gavin persona? And has the governor given these shadowy trolls his full endorsement?
Though sources close to Newsom confirm that he is the general in this online war, and that he has given it his whole-hearted support, he is not fighting alone. He’s backed by an army of soldiers who have weaponized memes, satirical videos, and name-calling in their battle against the MAGA-sphere, in increasingly outlandish ways.
Leading that team are two veteran operatives: Izzy Gardon, the governor’s communications director, and Brandon Richards, who heads Newsom’s rapid-response efforts online. At the governor’s behest, the duo have launched a combative communications campaign using their personal and official GovPressOffice X accounts to belittle, ridicule, and jab political opponents, starting with Trump and filtering down to Republican legislators in the California statehouse.
The two have leveraged their years in political communications — and millennial internet tastes — to take increasingly harder, and potentially risky, swings at Trump and his allies.
Gardon, 31, who has worked for Newsom for nearly three years, serves as the governor’s direct liaison to the California press corps and national reporters. His résumé includes stints in communications roles for some of California’s top officials, including former Gov. Jerry Brown, Attorney Gen. Rob Bonta, and former Attorney Gen. Xavier Becerra.
Richards, 32, has spent close to three years working for Newsom in a spokesperson capacity after serving as director of communications for the Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California and in press roles for the Democratic Attorneys General Association.
Gardon and Richards declined interview requests. But in conversations with The Standard, several people close to Newsom said the two staffers are part of a team implementing a broader strategy the governor has requested in order to fight Trump in the same antagonistic language style the president favors.
That jeering has earned Newsom praise from Democrats who, since November’s election loss, have begged their party to take a more aggressive stance against Trump and see the mockery as an effective messaging tool at a time when the party’s brand is suffering.
“I don’t think that spicy TikToks are the thing that should have people clutching their pearls,” said Jason Elliott, a political consultant who once worked as Newsom’s deputy chief of staff. “If you really believe Donald Trump is a threat to America, what are you prepared to do to stop that?”
As gerrymandering efforts in Texas and California heated up this month, Newsom’s GovPressOffice account launched a series of all-caps posts attacking Trump, calling him the “THE LOWEST POLLING PRESIDENT” and “DONALD ‘TACO’ TRUMP,” a derogatory acronym that means “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
“A SUCCESSFUL LIBERATION DAY! THANK YOU!” the team wrote Aug. 14 after Newsom held a rally to kick off the campaign for his redistricting ballot measure. Below the text was an AI-generated image of Newsom wearing a crown on the cover of a mock Time magazine cover titled “Long Live the King” — one of several fake images the team has recently promoted, including Newsom’s head on Mount Rushmore and a muscular version of the governor carrying an American flag.
“This more aggressive tone against Trump is perfectly legitimate,” said Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at UC Berkeley and the University of Southern California and served as a spokesperson for former Gov. Pete Wilson. “For better or worse, this is the way politics is practiced in the 2020s.”
Schnur said staff members have always been used as surrogates to “take the low road” for their bosses. “I used to get to do snark without nearly the same kind of tools and technology that they have,” he recalled. “Doing it by fax machine was not nearly as much fun.”
Since the start of August, such trolling has garnered the GovPressOffice account more than 250,000 new followers and more than 225 million impressions, according to the governor’s office. Newsom’s interviews with “digital first and independent outlets” have also generated tens of millions of views across platforms and accounts, the office said.
Gardon has in particular used his personal account to lob attacks against GOP officials, including posts in which he wrote that White House Communications Director Steven Cheung was “fat and ugly” and a “vile POS.”
Gardon in a June post referred to a Republican state lawmaker as a “bald little man” after the legislator appeared to criticize California Sen. Alex Padilla when he was pummeled to the ground by security forces during a Trump administration official’s news conference.
Those posts are a reflection of how Democrats have embraced a DGAF (that is, not giving a four-letter word) mentality that has pulled even the more restrained staffers into the public fight against Trump, said Maya Polon, a Sacramento political strategist and friend of Gardon.
“It is a little shocking to people to see Izzy himself tweeting, because he is someone who is so behind the scenes,” Polon said. But, she continued, “He is a direct reflection of the principle he works for.”
The team’s online comments have generated fury from MAGA acolytes, who have at times responded with homophobic attacks directed at Gardon, who is gay, and Richards, who is bisexual; the two have responded with jokes of their own.
“You guys, MAGA is calling me a twink,” Gardon wrote over a sarcastic emoji.
But the team’s online tactics have also drawn criticism from establishment Democrats and Republicans who argue that Newsom and his aides are inappropriately using government resources to wage immature political wars.
“[The @GovPressOffice] used to be a trusted channel during wildfires, earthquakes, and other emergencies. It carried real institutional weight. Now the tone undercuts that trust,” George Andrews, a spokesperson for the California Assembly Republican Caucus, wrote on social media. “In a real crisis, confusion spreads faster than facts. If this is how they want to politic, fine. Just don’t do it from the emergency mic.”
“I understand if it was a campaign account, but it’s not,” added Steven Maviglio, a Democratic consultant in Sacramento who has been critical of Newsom. “He’s governor of California and not governor of the Democrats of California.”
Maviglio, who served as spokesperson for former Gov. Gray Davis, said it’s expected that politicians from opposing camps will snipe at each other. But, he argued, “we would never use the governor’s resources to demean legislators or attack the president.”
Matt Rexroad, a GOP consultant in Sacramento, raised concerns that the online activity violates rules that dictate “what is appropriate for state-paid legislative staffers to do.” He noted that if Newsom wants to be the lead critic against Trump, it’s wrong of him to be engaging in the same “bad behavior” for which he has blasted the president.
Newsom has shrugged off the criticism, arguing that it’s hypocritical that he and his team have been finger-wagged while the president’s communications style is considered status quo.
“If you’ve got issues with what I’m putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns about what he’s putting out as president,” Newsom said during a recent news conference. “To the extent it’s gotten some attention, I’m pleased.”
For their part, Gardon and Richards have posted memes and other jokes that suggest the point of their posts has gone over critics’ heads.
“FoR as Much As @gAviNnEwsOM aNd HiS PosSy (@BRANDonRIChaRDs @iGARDON eTC) SEEM TO Hate @REAldOnaLDTRuMP ThEY SEem tO REALLy TAKe NoteS to COPy tHe wAY HE TalkS & PoStS,” Gardon posted Saturday. “iMiTAtIOn iS ThE SINcERESt FOrM oF FLaTTErY…”