Politics in 2026 has officially entered its pro-wrestling era… and Gavin Newsom just showed up with a folding chair. 🪑

The California governor has apparently decided that if the internet is a circus, he might as well be the guy riding the raptor through the flaming hoop. His X account now looks like it was fed a steady diet of Monster Energy, meme culture, and a Trump rally teleprompter stuck on CAPS LOCK. We’ve got Mount Rushmore edits. We’ve got shirtless dinosaur cavalry. We’ve got mock-serious all-caps proclamations about maps that read like they were ghostwritten by a parody account that forgot it was parody.

And here’s the twist… it’s working.

For a decade, Donald Trump basically turned social media into a bare-knuckle sport. All caps. Nicknames. Rage bait. Algorithm judo. Now Newsom is doing a kind of political cosplay, except instead of imitating the style to praise it, he’s exaggerating it until it becomes self-aware satire. He’s not trying to out-Trump Trump. He’s trying to hold up a funhouse mirror and let everyone stare at the distortion. 🎭

Even Steve Bannon seems to grudgingly admit the guy is at least throwing punches. Which tells you something. When the political Thunderdome crowd says, “Well, he’s fighting,” that’s practically a Yelp five-star review.

The delicious irony? Some of the same commentators who spent years defending the president’s meme-heavy, all-caps, insult-driven posting now clutch their pearls because Newsom is being unserious. Dana Perino says he needs to be more serious if he wants a bigger job. Meanwhile, the White House is literally responding to reporters with memes. We are now in a timeline where official government communications can plausibly include a “Mad Men” reaction GIF and no one blinks. 📺

Newsom’s team treats every outrage cycle like free advertising. “You’re weird!” becomes “Thanks for the engagement boost!” They poke the bear… the bear roars… the algorithm smiles.

Is it authentic? That’s the real question. The internet can smell fake from orbit. But right now, the Democratic base seems less concerned with purity and more concerned with pulse. They’ve been watching politics like it’s a slow, polite panel discussion while the other side has been running a UFC match. Newsom basically said, “Cool. Gloves off.” 🥊

The bigger story isn’t dinosaurs with abs. It’s that we may be watching the early prototype of a post-literate presidential campaign… less white papers, more viral dominance. Attention is currency. Impressions are power. If 2028 is fought in the algorithm trenches, Newsom just set up a forward operating base.

Whether that translates into votes is another matter. Memes don’t caucus. AI raptors don’t knock doors. But the fact that aides to a sitting governor are openly running a “brain rot trust” as a communications strategy tells you something profound about where politics lives now.

We’re no longer arguing just on cable news. We’re arguing inside the For You tab.

And in that arena, subtlety gets you 12 likes. Caps lock gets you 12 million. 🚀