The California Governor, in the launch of his new podcast, announced that he completely aligned with far-right, anti-LGBTQ+ influencer Charlie Kirk on sports, and agreed on prisons and youth care.
I appreciate what you’re saying, but this is not a misleading hit piece. This is written by a prominent trans journalist (if you’ve seen the trans legislative risk map, that’s her) who is married to a high profile trans state representative (Zooey Zephyr).
You may not like her interpretations of his statements, but they come from a place of familiarity with the political scene for trans people both as a reporter and as a trans person. She has a high reputation with a lot of the trans community who follow political news, and calling her work a hit piece is unreasonable.
Regardless of her credentials, this was clearly written to cast Newsom in the worst possible light. The article is rife with hyperbole and only targets selected statements in the transcript.
And it’s absolutely misleading to say someone “completely aligns” with someone on an over-arching concept like trans rights when they agree with one subset of the argument.
It was this statement in particular that changed the tone from an opinion piece to a hit piece IMHO:
When Newsom platforms someone like Charlie Kirk, he isn’t fostering a “discussion” on transgender people in sports—he is handing a known hate monger a microphone to denigrate an already vulnerable community. That’s the real objective. Newsom isn’t engaging in open dialogue or debate; he is recalibrating his political stance to make targeting transgender people seem palatable, selling that shift to his base as a strategic necessity. And he’s doing it by giving one of the most notorious anti-LGBTQ+ extremists a seat at the table.
Emphasis mine. Here the author makes the claim that Newsom is deliberately targeting transgender people to score political points - yet he’s not. In the interview, Kirk brought those topics up, and when they came up, Newsom was describing the political landscape, not justifying it.
I mean, hell, go ahead and call Newsom out for the dumb shit he does (and this shit was not bright), but forcing a purity test on the man who made gay marriage legal is counterproductive. Claiming that he’s deliberately trying to target transgender folk is just plain false.
I appreciate what you’re saying, but this is not a misleading hit piece. This is written by a prominent trans journalist (if you’ve seen the trans legislative risk map, that’s her) who is married to a high profile trans state representative (Zooey Zephyr).
You may not like her interpretations of his statements, but they come from a place of familiarity with the political scene for trans people both as a reporter and as a trans person. She has a high reputation with a lot of the trans community who follow political news, and calling her work a hit piece is unreasonable.
Regardless of her credentials, this was clearly written to cast Newsom in the worst possible light. The article is rife with hyperbole and only targets selected statements in the transcript.
And it’s absolutely misleading to say someone “completely aligns” with someone on an over-arching concept like trans rights when they agree with one subset of the argument.
It was this statement in particular that changed the tone from an opinion piece to a hit piece IMHO:
Emphasis mine. Here the author makes the claim that Newsom is deliberately targeting transgender people to score political points - yet he’s not. In the interview, Kirk brought those topics up, and when they came up, Newsom was describing the political landscape, not justifying it.
I mean, hell, go ahead and call Newsom out for the dumb shit he does (and this shit was not bright), but forcing a purity test on the man who made gay marriage legal is counterproductive. Claiming that he’s deliberately trying to target transgender folk is just plain false.