Gavin Newsom's glide path to the 2028 Democratic nomination just hit an obstacle from an unexpected direction: the party's own loudest online voice.
Far-left streamer Hasan Piker, whom Breitbart describes as the Democrats' favorite podcaster, used a recent episode of his podcast with rapper Vic Mensa to dump cold water on the California governor's White House ambitions. The clip of Piker's remarks circulated on X this week by user @MarcoFoster_, who posted the segment with the caption beginning, "Hasan Piker on Gavin Newsom: 'He's very unappealing to me, he's terrible...'"
Piker did not stop at style. He went after Newsom's record — specifically the governor's intervention in the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.
"He's very unappealing to me, he's terrible, but he's terrible because of his policies," Piker said. "Look at the merger that just took place. Rob Bonta was supposed to be championing the Attorneys General all around the country to stop this Paramount merger and at the last second there's tremendous pressure coming from capital."
Piker continued, describing Newsom as having pressured the state's attorney general to back off the antitrust fight and then defending the outcome by arguing the matter belonged "in the boardroom and not the courtroom."
That account tracks with Newsom's public position. As Breitbart reported, the governor openly urged Attorney General Rob Bonta to drop the state's lawfare attempt to block the Paramount-Warner merger, worried that killing the deal would send Paramount's headquarters out of California and push Warner Bros. into bankruptcy — wiping out jobs in a state already bleeding employers, a year before the Democratic primary formally begins.
The political math is not complicated. Newsom saw a corporate merger as a jobs question. Piker saw it as capital defeating the progressive antitrust agenda — and he said so on the record.
It is a small moment with outsized signal. Piker commands one of the largest audiences on the online left, and his refusal to affirm the party's most visible 2028 name is an early warning sign for a governor whose national brand depends on keeping the progressive base enthusiastic while courting donors in Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Those two constituencies just collided over the same deal, and Newsom sided with the money.
The timing is rough, too. Democrats spent the days after their midterm victories trading memos about who deserves credit and what the party stands for in 2028 — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker both published their own road maps, according to reporting on the party's internal jockeying. Newsom, by contrast, kept a low profile on election night, skipping successor Xavier Becerra's party and doing a YouTube interview instead. Strategists quoted in that coverage cautioned that the midterm wins reflected voter anger over gas prices and the cost of living rather than affection for the Democratic Party — "There's no renewed faith in the Democratic Party," San Francisco strategist Eric Jaye said.
Piker's remarks also landed alongside his post-election activity that drew conservative attention: WLT Report characterized him as celebrating the Democratic sweep with threats to jail conservatives and demands for more socialism. Ahead of the 2024 election, Vic Mensa — Piker's conversation partner in the clip — said MAGA voters should be jailed "at the least and murdered at best," per Breitbart's account. That is the company Newsom now keeps in the online left's ecosystem, whether he likes it or not.
The governor's team has not responded publicly to Piker's comments, and it is not yet known whether the criticism will affect his planning for a 2028 campaign. What is known is that the first real shot at Newsom's presidential launch came not from a Republican, but from a socialist streamer with a microphone and a grudge over a merger.
Our Take
Patriots, enjoy this one. The Democratic Party's 2028 frontrunner — the slick, hair-gelled governor who runs California into the ground and then lectures the rest of the country about competence — cannot even get a kind word from the left's most popular livestreamer. Piker called him "terrible." That is the base talking, and the base is not impressed.
The reason is instructive. Newsom tried to play both sides — keep the progressive antitrust warriors happy while protecting the Hollywood and Silicon Valley donors who fund his ambitions — and got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The Paramount-Warner merger forced him to choose, and he chose the boardroom. Piker noticed, and so will every left-wing primary voter in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Here is the question every California taxpayer should be asking: if the governor is willing to bend a state antitrust investigation for the sake of jobs he claims would vanish, what else is he willing to bend on the road to the White House? Californians have watched the state's jobs drain away for years — the only thing Newsom has actually protected is his own national profile.
Let the Democrats sort out their circular firing squad. The rest of us should remember: this is the man the legacy media keeps calling the future of the Democratic Party. His own side just said no — on tape.
