Gavin Newsom wants on the biggest podcasts in the country.
One host keeps turning him down flat.
So Newsom unloaded on Joe Rogan with a label that is going to follow him around for a while.
Newsom Begs Alex Cooper While Torching Rogan
California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) pleaded with Alex Cooper to bring him on her Call Her Daddy podcast while taking fresh shots at “bullsh*t artist” Joe Rogan for not having him on. The comments came during a sit-down with YouTuber Shelby Church, and Newsom did not hold back.
Newsom sat down recently with YouTuber Shelby Church for a discussion about the role podcasts played in the 2024 presidential election, and Church noted former Vice President Kamala Harris’s appearance on Call Her Daddy, and President Donald Trump’s last-minute visit to Rogan’s Austin studio for his Joe Rogan Experience podcast, which was largely seen as a final boost to Trump in the election.
And Newsom did not love the question. “I mean, you’re bringing up Rogan,” Newsom said with a groan.
Newsom has said in the past that Rogan is “too chicken” to have him on the podcast, and Newsom is a frequent target of Rogan, who said high taxes, homelessness, and more under Newsom led to the podcaster and comedian moving himself and his operation from California to Texas.
But Newsom tried to frame himself as the open-minded one in the fight. Newsom argued that he enjoys talking to folks on the other side of the political aisle, citing past interviews with the late Charlie Kirk, Fox News’ Sean Hannity, and YouTuber and former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan.
“I’ve long prided myself for reaching out to the people I disagree with, go on Fox, I had Sean Hannity here in Sacramento for an hour and a half and the only deal was no editing. Let’s do it and you gotta show it all,” Newsom said.
And according to Newsom, Rogan simply refuses the invitation. When Church asked Newsom whether he would appear on popular podcasts like the Joe Rogan Experience and Call Her Daddy, where Harris appeared during her unsuccessful 2024 presidential run against Trump, Newsom said Rogan “won’t have me on.”
“He doesn’t want to be confronted with the bullsh*t that he spews, particularly in the political sense,” he told Church.
“He’s a bullsh*t artist in political terms. Sorry. He just is. I’m happy to confront him, but he won’t do it. Now I’m not even interested because it’s been two years of him just bashing me on a weekly basis.”
Rogan Has Fired Back For Years With Receipts
Newsom is not exactly an innocent bystander in this fight. The California governor has spent months taking his own shots at Rogan on social media.
The latest round of the feud started when the Governor’s press office posted that “Joe ‘Little Guy’ Rogan is too chicken to have me on his failing podcast because he know I’d crush him, so he takes cheap shots from the peanut gallery as he gets relegated to irrelevancy.”
Over an old clip of Rogan slamming Newsom, the Governor’s account added, “All talk, no action. I’m ready when you are, ‘Little Guy.’ or keep hiding.”
But Rogan has receipts of his own. In a 2023 clip, the now Texas-based Rogan called Newsom a “f*cking con man” and a “stone cold, narrative-driven politician.”
And Rogan did not stop there. Rogan went on to compare Newsom unfavorably to Trump on the authenticity scale, saying, “Whether you like Trump or not, whether you think he’s corrupt, or not that’s a human being.”
Rogan has also hit Newsom on actual numbers rather than vibes. The podcaster called Newsom a “terrible” politician and a “good bullsh*t artist,” claiming that the only reason he’s in office is that he doesn’t have any good competition.
“You have the highest unemployment. You have the highest homelessness,” Rogan said.
Those are not small jabs in a state that Newsom has governed since 2019. California’s cost of living, homelessness crisis, and business flight have become punchlines on Rogan’s show for a reason.
What Does It Mean?
Newsom keeps insisting he is the Democrat willing to go anywhere and talk to anyone. But his own guest list tells a different story.
Rogan himself noted that Newsom “had this idea of reaching across the aisle, so he’d reach across the aisle and he gets guys like Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon on and they eat his lunch,” suggesting the Democrat Party likely responded with horror.
So what happened after that? Rogan pointed out the shift: “Oh, Rahm Emanuel. Okay now he’s with his own side. Scott Galloway, pretty much his own side. Anthony Scaramucci. He hates Trump, that’s a good move. Ezra Klein, okay, that makes sense.”
“So it’s not that it’s gone away,” Rogan said, reworking his assessment. “It’s just that it’s so horrible, nobody’s watching it, and nobody’s even talking about it anymore.”
That is the pattern with self-described moderate Democrats. They claim the label, then quietly retreat to safe, ideologically friendly guests the moment the conversation gets uncomfortable.
Newsom wants credit for having Hannity in Sacramento for ninety minutes of unedited tape. Fine. But Rogan is asking for the same thing on his own show, and Newsom will not do it.
And the timing matters. Reports note that Newsom is preparing for an almost certain 2028 White House run, which makes his sudden hunger for Call Her Daddy and his public insistence that Rogan is “too scared” look less like genuine curiosity and more like a campaign strategy aimed at young male voters Democrats lost badly in 2024.
Harris already tried the podcast route against Trump and it did not work. Trump sat with Rogan for nearly three hours of unfiltered conversation in Austin before the election, and the result was a landslide. Democrats have been chasing that model ever since without figuring out why it worked in the first place.
It worked because voters wanted to hear Trump answer questions without a script, not because a podcast microphone itself moves numbers. Newsom calling Rogan a name on social media while quietly booking Rahm Emanuel and Ezra Klein suggests he still has not learned the difference.
Rogan is not obligated to hand a 2028 hopeful a friendly stage. But Newsom picking a public fight with one of the most listened-to voices in the country, while avoiding the kind of unscripted confrontation he claims to welcome, is the exact posture California voters have watched for years. Talk about openness. Govern and guest-book accordingly.
Sources: Mediaite, Yahoo News, Deadline, The National Desk, Inkl, Irish Star, Fox News
