Gavin Newsom is chasing the Victory Royale — in Fortnite and in politics

WASHINGTON (CN) — Perhaps the most damning criticism California Governor Gavin Newsom received all week was how poorly he played Fortnite.

“He went the wrong way a lot — he was not locked in,” joked Twitch streamer ConnorEatsPants, who moments before had wrapped up an hourlong livestream with Newsom.

The Golden State governor and rumored presidential hopeful joined Connor, as he’s known to most viewers, on his semi-regular “Fortnite Friday” stream, a vehicle through which the streamer has interviewed celebrities and even some other political figures.

And while Newsom certainly isn’t making pro leagues anytime soon — he spent most of the stream spectating Connor after getting killed in-game — the Fortnite Friday stream proved an unlikely front on which the governor faced pressure on key issues from the national stage.

The attention economy

Newsom’s appearance on the ConnorEatsPants stream comes as he attempts to harness the voter-reaching power of content creators, and at a time when his fellow Democrats are struggling to expand their own share of the so-called attention economy.

More than 1.2 million people watched Newsom’s interview with Shawn Ryan, the show’s eponymous host and former Navy SEAL. And on Newsom’s own podcast, he’s debated well-known political figures with worldviews diametrically opposed to his own — such as Steve Bannon and the late Charlie Kirk.

The governor has also debuted a social media presence that has long been the provenance of President Donald Trump. Through his press team’s official X account, Newsom posts in all caps, responding to the president and White House officials using AI-generated memes and derisive nicknames, garnering thousands of likes and millions of views.

Compare Newsom’s engagement with House Democrats’ “government shutdown livestream” this week, which reportedly generated fewer than 100,000 views across several platforms and was plagued with “cringe” moments, technical glitches and rerun content.

The semi-marathon stream, aimed at helping Democrats win the shutdown messaging war over Republicans, was mercilessly mocked by the White House and was easily outshined by a separate live event hosted by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

Earlier this year, Senate Democrats made a similar attempt at livestream content as they rallied against the GOP’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” But it was a similarly paltry showing, with some purportedly “live” content seemingly recorded ahead of time and a low viewer count — at one point, Courthouse News was the only member of Democrats’ live audience on TikTok.

And as he leapt from Fortnite’s fabled Battle Bus with Connor, Newsom levied sharp criticism on his fellow Democrats for lagging in the media space compared with Republicans.

“Where the hell is my party?” he said. “We’re getting crushed on podcasts. We’re getting crushed on the cable networks. We’ve got to break those silos, and we’ve got to get our shit together.”

Newsom’s Fortnite Friday appearance garnered more than 8,000 concurrent viewers on Twitch. The live chat was alight with users weighing in on the governor’s comments and urging Connor to poll the California lawmaker on a host of state and national issues.

It’s not Connor’s first time hopping on the Battle Bus with political figures. Last October, the streamer played Fortnite with disgraced former Representative George Santos, now serving a seven-year prison sentence for wire fraud and identity theft.

Since then, Connor has had other politically adjacent guests on his semi-regular stream, such as conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair and Adrian Dittman, the X user once rumored to be an alternate account for Elon Musk.

And Connor, with his nearly 1 million X followers and a Twitch audience of more than 700,000, is not shy about shopping around “Fortnite Friday” to potential guests. He can often be found in the X mentions of prominent political and media figures such as NewsNation host Chris Cuomo and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, pitching interviews.

On Trump, trans athletes and Kamala Harris

On Friday’s stream with Newsom, Connor appeared to seize a rare opportunity to press the California governor on a number of issues — chief among them being Newsom’s controversial stance on trans athletes.

In his March podcast interview with Kirk, the governor said that it was “deeply unfair” that transgender female athletes be allowed to participate in girls’ sports.

“I think that highlighting that as if it’s something that is genuinely affecting a lot of people is, in and of itself, hurting the trans community,” Connor told Newsom. He pointed out that trans athletes make up a small percentage of the scholastic sports community and that “trans people are not winning sports.”

“On the exclusive issue of sports, I’ve had a difficult time for the last couple of years,” said Newsom. “There have been some high-profile circumstances where, honestly, I’ve struggled with that.”

But the California governor stressed that it was Republicans, not him, running on the issue of trans athletes and making it a policy issue. “I hate the way that Republicans are manipulating and using the community, it disgusts me,” he added.

Following Friday’s interview, Connor reflected that he had done his best to push Newsom on his stance on trans athletes but also acknowledged the governor’s defense.

“You do have to recall that he was the first governor to do a lot for trans folk — not to say that he’s done enough,” he explained.

Newsom also faced tough questioning from Connor on his approach to Israel’s war in Gaza — and particularly on his belief that the conflict should be solved with a two-state solution. The governor called such an outcome “foundational” and slammed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who he said has “given up” on the prospect.

Connor questioned the governor on why he wouldn’t get behind a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict that saw a single unified state where “everybody had equal voting rights.” The streamer suggested that Netanyahu’s stance indicated that one state “may be the only possible solution”

“It’s a different approach to reach that same perspective,” Newsom said of his own view. “But I’ve long believed in the two-state solution, and I believe it’s the appropriate and preferable path.”

The California governor also weighed in on several other hot-button political issues, such as artificial intelligence, home ownership and the recent acquisition of video game developer Electronic Arts by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund. And Newsom also offered some candid insights into his conversations with other political figures.

Asked by Connor about a passage in Kamala Harris’ new book “107 Days” in which the Democratic presidential candidate suggested that Newsom initially sidestepped endorsing her, the governor reiterated his defense that he had followed up with Harris over text.

“I said ‘why didn’t you mention in the book that three hours later I publicly endorsed you for president?” said Newsom.

The California governor also revealed that the last time he had spoken with Trump, the president had asked for his opinion on “Newscum,” the derisive nickname he’d chosen for the lawmaker.

“He goes, ‘it’s pretty good, right?’” Newsom recalled. “This is the president of the United States, he’s 79 years old, and he’s acting like a seven or nine-year-old.”

Perhaps to the audience’s disappointment, Newsom’s Fortnite gameplay quickly became a backdrop to his conversation with Connor. The California governor, using the screen name “CAGovXL,” was frequently separated on the game map from his squadmate, and was apparently experiencing a hardware issue with the Nintendo Switch console he was using.

But Newsom’s inexperience with gaming — he made one particularly dated reference to Pong — yielded some unquestionably entertaining moments. At one point in the hourlong stream, he and Connor were on the receiving end of a team who were clearly watching the live feed to score a couple of easy eliminations on the streamer and the California governor.

“These guys are stream sniping,” Connor complained, referring to the common name for such a practice.

“That ain’t right,” Newsom replied, clearly in the dark about what was going on.

Still, the governor said he was thankful for the opportunity to bring his message to an unconventional platform, framing it as an opportunity to put “a mirror” up to politics and break through to new audiences.

“We are in the fight,” Newsom concluded. “We are fighting the good fight; we’re not giving up. I’m not giving into the cynicism or negativity.”

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