California Gov. Gavin Newsom is admitting out loud what Democrats across the country are quietly thinking: Vice President JD Vance may be the biggest Republican threat to them in America — even more than President Donald Trump himself.
Newsom made the startling admission Wednesday during an interview with former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on her MS NOW show “The Briefing.”
He attacked Vance as “a unique fraud and phony” and said the vice president frightens him as a potential 2028 presidential candidate more than the sitting president.
“Vance, for whatever reason, scares me,” Newsom told Psaki. “Almost more than Trump. I don’t know. I just — I mean, talk about a guy who put a mask on and his face grew into it.”
The interview was recorded a day after Trump’s State of the Union address and aired Wednesday. Psaki sad Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were “waiting in the wings” to carry on the MAGA movement into 2028 after Trump reaches his term limits, and asked Newsom who he thought could carry the torch for “America First” conservatives.
Newsom called Rubio “a complete fraud” but admitted he was deeply worried about Vance and his popularity.
“What frauds. What phonies,” Newsom said of both men. “But JD is a unique fraud and phony, and he’s a little more dangerous.”
“The folks around him — these are not folks that believe — I mean, listen to some of its biggest funders, the way they talk. There’s a nihilism to the way they talk about the world,” he said.
“I literally know them, not figuratively know them. Some of them are in the book, I knew them back when.”
Newsom said the 2028 contest may not be Vance’s to run, and that he is worried Trump might try to engineer a third term or anoint his own successor.
“I don’t want to be overly hyperbolic about this: But he’s going to try to run this out until right after the end, until he can pick and choose who goes behind him,” Newsom said. “Or, God forbid, we don’t take back the House of Representatives, he may be on that ballot.”
“I just wouldn’t put it past him,” Newsom added.
Trump has repeatedly said that he will not seek a third term in the White House, and has repeatedly praised the skills of both Vance and Rubio and said either would be a good choice.
The interview came as Newsom continues to position himself as one of the leading Democratic voices opposing the Trump administration — and as one of the most likely Democratic presidential contenders in 2028, should he choose to run.