On with Kara Swisher Gavin Newsom on His Memoir, Trump, and Plans for 2028
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Mar 2, 2026 
Gavin Newsom, California governor, memoirist, and possible 2028 contender, discusses his new memoir and how family history shaped him. He reflects on growing up between wealth and struggle. He talks California politics, same-sex marriage, AI regulation, concerns about Trump and foreign policy, and threats to democracy.
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Memoir Emerged From A Single Family Chapter
- Gavin Newsom shifted a planned policy book into a personal memoir after editor Anne Goddard insisted the chapter about his family was the real book.
- Goddard urged deeper excavation of his parents' stories, prompting Newsom to rewrite and reveal previously unknown family trauma and motivations.
California's Voracious History Shapes Policy Today
- Newsom frames California's history as defined by voracious extraction and consumption, linking Gold Rush-era impulses to modern water and resource politics.
- He opens the book at the American River to symbolize environmental and historical continuities shaping state policy and identity.
Raised Between Wealth Access And Working Class Grit
- Newsom describes growing between his single mother's struggle and his father's Getty-connected privileges, feeling both foster-family grit and access to elite circles.
- He recalls being dismissed at a Getty family event and repeatedly returning home from luxury trips to a mother who 'never talked about it again.'
