California Gov. Gavin Newsom spent nearly four hours on an episode of the “Shawn Ryan Show” released this week, opening the conversation by accepting a boxed Sig Sauer P365 Macro pistol that host and former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan presented as a gift.
“I’m not anti-gun at all,” Newsom said after accepting the gifted pistol from the podcast host. “I’m for just some gun-safety common sense that I think the vast majority of folks to the right and the left agree on.”
Ryan told Newsom he had been looking for “two years for a guest on the opposite side of the fence” to appear on the show. Newsom, on his own podcast, has hosted conservatives such as former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom spent nearly four hours on an episode of the “Shawn Ryan Show” released this week, opening the conversation by accepting a boxed Sig Sauer P365 Macro pistol that host and former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan presented as a gift.
“I’m not anti-gun at all,” Newsom said after accepting the gifted pistol from the podcast host. “I’m for just some gun-safety common sense that I think the vast majority of folks to the right and the left agree on.”
Ryan told Newsom he had been looking for “two years for a guest on the opposite side of the fence” to appear on the show. Newsom, on his own podcast, has hosted conservatives such as former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
Near the top of the show, Ryan took a moment to ask Newsom a question he said he received from popular podcaster Joe Rogan.
Rogan’s question was about who would be held responsible for “mandating COVID-19 vaccines for children … and who will take responsibility for the unprecedented increases in myocarditis and cancer cases among them?” Rogan wondered in his question whether Newsom had any “remorse” for the “draconian” measures during the COVID-19 pandemic, which he said were “heavily influenced by the pharmaceutical industry.”
After noting that Rogan would not have him on his podcast, Newsom said, “I’ve signed some of the most progressive laws against big pharma in the country. So, I have receipts on that.
“No one should suggest that it was about doing the bidding of big pharma—quite the contrary.”
Newsom said that at the beginning of the pandemic, he worked well alongside President Donald Trump’s administration to “mitigate the impacts of this novel disease.”
He explained that California had hired outside researchers to review every pandemic restriction the state imposed.
“I’ve asked our team to put together an objective review of everything we did right, everything we did wrong,” he said, adding later that closing beaches early in 2020 “was wrong” and that the report will be finished next month.
Moving on to immigration, Newsom said California has turned “11,000” violent offenders over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since he took office and repeated his view that “nations need borders.”
He argued that federal leaders—under both former President Joe Biden and President Trump—let conditions escalate. He criticized the first Trump administration for only focusing on sections of border wall rather than fixing the immigration system.
“We failed at the border,” he said of the Biden years, adding that California had to spend about $1.3 billion on illegal immigrant centers and deploy the state National Guard while waiting for broader federal action.
Turning to more recent actions, a June 7 memorandum from President Trump ordered at least 2,000 Guard troops to federal duty “to protect Federal immigration detention facilities and other Federal property” during a week of protests and riots against ICE operations in Los Angeles.
Newsom called the move “weakness masquerading as strength,” saying the deployment frightens families without easing asylum backlogs. Moving back to the issue of guns, Ryan asked why California issues relatively few concealed-carry permits.
The governor replied that the state’s urban communities “just don’t want people running around with concealed carry.”
The governor said he has had concerns with large capacity magazines and “weapons of war.”
Newsom’s communications director, Izzy Gardon, told Sacramento’s NBC affiliate that the pistol will be the first firearm registered in Newsom’s name, and noted the governor left the firearm in Tennessee in Ryan’s possession as he works to lawfully bring it back to California.
The discussion also turned to fentanyl trafficking and to technology policy, saying that after an October meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, he believes the competition for artificial-intelligence leadership is “perhaps the most definitive race of our lifetime” and something that the United States should place an emphasis on.
Some comments departed from positions held by progressive allies. Questioned about transgender athletes competing in girls’ sports, he said the state’s current eligibility rule “isn’t fair” to female athletes and asked legislators to write a replacement.
He also told Democrats they risk “losing a generation of boys” to loneliness and online pornography unless the party pays closer attention to male mental-health concerns.
“We’ve got a crisis of masculinity, a crisis with young men,” Newsom said. “Suicide rates, deaths of despair—in every category, our men are just getting crushed, and my party needs to own that. I mean, if this was happening in any other group, we’d be yelling and screaming about it.”
Newsom’s appearance followed a two-day trip through South Carolina’s Upstate region, where he headlined several Democratic events. U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn teased at one event that Newsom was one of many candidates beginning their campaigning for president in 2028, although Newsom has not said whether he will run.
“No, I’m gearing up for 2016 ’cause from my humble perspective, I think it’s existential if my party is not successful next year,” he told Ryan, misstating the year before correcting himself a moment later. “Don’t look for the guy or gal on the white horse to come save the day in 2028. I’m blown away by the Democrats’ obsession with just that sort of perfect person… this John Wayne thing.”
He added later that his decision would depend on purpose, not timing: “Who the [expletive] knows? That’s fate. … I would have to sit in front of you and feel totally congruent—that I’m just like, this is the why—and have that burning conviction.” A moment later, he pointed at the current president: “The more Trump keeps doing what he does, the more compelled I am to think about it.”
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