While fly fishing with Jake Tapper, Newsom admits he’d bow out of 2028 if Harris runs
California Gov. Gavin Newsom told CNN’s Jake Tapper he will not run for president in 2028 if former Vice President Kamala Harris enters the race—a concession delivered not in Sacramento, but waist-deep in a Montana river.
“I don’t know if she runs, but we’ll see,” Newsom said. “I wouldn’t run if she ran.”
Tapper pressed him.
“Why would I? I wouldn’t do that to her. I wouldn’t do it to me. … I won’t waste everyone’s time. Who needs that?” Newsom replied.
The interview, part of Tapper’s “Out of Office” series, was staged at Newsom’s in-laws’ Bitterroot Springs Ranch near Stevensville, Montana. The two men stood in the cold Bitterroot River, casting for trout and talking childhood, family, regrets, and whether Newsom is the “zeitgeist” or just “wasting everybody’s time.”
Newsom called a Harris-Newsom primary “a gift from God for everybody else” and “mutual assured destruction.” He said it “services no greater good.”
Tapper noted that Harris collapsed before 2020, then lost the presidency in 2024. Newsom conceded that was “pretty good” and “objectively true,” then said he would not split the same donor and activist networks.
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“Every other Democrat is praying for that, and every other Republican is gonna pray for that. And that’s just not gonna happen.”
He also said he was not ready to challenge Joe Biden in 2024 because he lacked a big enough “why,” that his wife and four children would have to sign off on any White House bid, and that he is “not screwing anything up anymore.”
He said all of this in a river. Californians are still waiting for a bullet train on dry land, while being told the governor is focused on the job he already has.
So the deal is this: if Kamala’s in the water, Gavin drops the rod. If she isn’t, he keeps casting.
The California Globe has documented the gap between Newsom’s national brand and the state he actually governs.
A 2025 UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll found 54% of registered California voters believed Newsom was “doing things that will benefit him as a possible candidate for president.” Only 26% thought he was “governing the state and helping to solve its problems.”
An Inside California Politics/Emerson College poll that same year found nearly 60% of California voters said he should not run for president at all. Those numbers arrived while Newsom was already running a national operation: out-of-state campaign swings, a high-profile podcast, redistricting fights framed as a rebuke to President Donald Trump, and a multi-state endorsement tour.
Last week, Xavier Becerra, Newsom’s heir apparent in the 2026 governor’s race, finally agreed to a CNN debate with Republican Steve Hilton. Hilton has spent the cycle arguing that Becerra is selling “more of the same Newsom-era California.”
Dana Bash and Jake Tapper will moderate on Sept. 30. Tapper now has Newsom in waders and Newsom’s preferred successor in a studio two weeks later.
Not screwing up anything anymore?
Homelessness remains the governor’s most expensive screwup.
California has spent more than $37 billion on it since 2019 under Newsom—roughly $200,000 per homeless person—and still accounts for a quarter to a third of the nation’s homeless population.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is stepping off the LAHSA commission she appointed herself to as federal investigators examine the spending. Leaving a board does not close the books or clear the encampments.
It’s more a STATEMENT that he won’t run with her as she is an embarassment to the party. And if that’s so – then he can walk back the $20 million he thinks Californians will budget for his security once he is out of the governors position – because we the people of California DO NOT want to fund his security while he runs for president or for any other thing he runs for – he has plenty of $$ coming from his donors, not to mention ALL the $$ he’s stolen from California