Will Gavin Newsom’s Trump Trolling Deliver Real Results? | Pivot
Abby Phillip (guest), Kara Swisher (host), Jillian (panelist on Abby’s CNN show clip) (guest), Narrator, Narrator
In this episode of Pivot, featuring Abby Phillip and Kara Swisher, Will Gavin Newsom’s Trump Trolling Deliver Real Results? | Pivot explores trump, Newsom, and Jackson: Media, Power, and Democracy Collide Loudly Kara Swisher and guest co‑host Abby Phillip unpack how media, politicians, and corporations are navigating an increasingly illiberal political environment under Trump. Phillip explains her approach to moderating volatile political panels, using the Jillian Michaels slavery segment to show how she balances open debate with firm fact‑checking. They then explore Gavin Newsom’s highly online trolling of Trump, debating whether viral social media tactics translate into real electoral power, and discuss Phillip’s forthcoming book on Jesse Jackson’s overlooked impact on Black political power and the modern Democratic coalition. The conversation also covers Trump’s deference to Putin, the militarization of Washington, D.C., corporate capitulation to the Trump administration, and the broader threats to democratic norms.
Trump, Newsom, and Jackson: Media, Power, and Democracy Collide Loudly
Kara Swisher and guest co‑host Abby Phillip unpack how media, politicians, and corporations are navigating an increasingly illiberal political environment under Trump. Phillip explains her approach to moderating volatile political panels, using the Jillian Michaels slavery segment to show how she balances open debate with firm fact‑checking. They then explore Gavin Newsom’s highly online trolling of Trump, debating whether viral social media tactics translate into real electoral power, and discuss Phillip’s forthcoming book on Jesse Jackson’s overlooked impact on Black political power and the modern Democratic coalition. The conversation also covers Trump’s deference to Putin, the militarization of Washington, D.C., corporate capitulation to the Trump administration, and the broader threats to democratic norms.
Key Takeaways
Responsible moderators must give ideological space while imposing factual guardrails.
Phillip lets a wide range of guests speak, but steps in when arguments become disinformation, bad‑faith ‘viral’ game‑playing, personal attacks, or legally risky claims, aiming to reflect real debates without turning TV into performance art.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Slavery in the U.S. cannot be decoupled from race or minimized by ownership statistics.
Phillip dismantles Michaels’s claim that U. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Hyper‑partisanship is getting worse, but honest value conflicts still need airing.
Phillip argues her show can’t ‘solve’ polarization, but can at least force opposing sides to stop talking past each other, clarifying where Americans truly agree, disagree, and what those choices say about democratic values.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Jesse Jackson prefigured today’s populism and multiracial coalitions.
Phillip’s book contends Jackson was a celebrity populist before Trump and a class‑focused economic messenger before Sanders, reshaping Democratic rules in ways that enabled Obama and modeling the diverse coalition Democrats now claim.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Trump’s admiration for strongmen like Putin distorts U.S. foreign policy choices.
Phillip stresses Trump seems overawed by Putin and too ready to accept his narrative on Ukraine over U. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Militarizing U.S. cities erodes public trust and functions as political theater.
The deployment of National Guard and masked agents in D. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Viral trolling is not the same as electoral power or governing change.
Phillip is skeptical that Newsom’s meme‑driven war with Trump, or any politician’s social media clout, predicts presidential viability; what matters is whether those tactics translate into actual votes and structural reforms like fairer maps.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Notable Quotes
““It is nonsensical to suggest that slavery in the United States was about something other than race.””
— Abby Phillip
““You don’t have to own slaves to enforce white supremacy and slavery, to benefit from it, to gain generational wealth as a result of it.””
— Abby Phillip
““Democrats need to start winning elections. After all of this is done, what I want to know is what are they actually doing to change the electoral reality in the country?””
— Abby Phillip
““People often mistake those two things: does this person go viral on social media versus can they actually bank votes? And those things are not the same.””
— Abby Phillip
““If people thought that corporate America was gonna be the place where there was gonna be resistance to Trump, you are not paying attention.””
— Abby Phillip
Questions Answered in This Episode
How should news hosts balance giving a platform to widely held but harmful beliefs with the risk of legitimizing misinformation on national television?
Kara Swisher and guest co‑host Abby Phillip unpack how media, politicians, and corporations are navigating an increasingly illiberal political environment under Trump. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
In what concrete ways did Jesse Jackson’s campaigns change the Democratic Party’s rules, rhetoric, and coalition, and how might that inform strategies against Trumpism now?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Can Democrats ‘fight fire with fire’—using gerrymandering and trolling—without undermining their own claims to higher democratic and ethical standards?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What mechanisms, if any, can constrain presidents from using federal law enforcement and the military as a personalized, ideologically aligned security apparatus?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
How can journalists and citizens more effectively distinguish between performative virality and real political power when evaluating leaders like Gavin Newsom or Donald Trump?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Transcript Preview
I don't think that your presidential chances are related to your social media clout.
Yeah. Though he does look good astride an eagle with a chest. He does look good. (laughs) Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. Welcome back to ... Scott Free August. Scott is still away so I have yet another fantastic co-host, Abby Phillip, the anchor of CNN's News Night with Abby Phillip. Abby, welcome.
I am so honored to be here when Scott is not around.
I know. We can do all kinds of naughty things.
It's gonna be great.
Just, I don't know if you listened to Rachel last week, but (laughs) this last week, but-
I did.
... we can do whatever we want.
It was very lesbian.
Um, and you also-
It was great. (laughs)
Yeah, you also get a little break 'cause you're usually the host. You're just the wrangler. So I will wrangle you if you don't mind.
Great.
Yeah. So I know you're, um ... I want to talk a little bit about a couple of things y- you're up to. Um, one is your show, your show which has been very successful, incredibly busy, as I said, wrangling and then sometimes wrestling to the ground all sorts of personalities on your five nights a week show. This week, incredibly, you have a lot of viral moments. It's usually with Scott Jennings. We're not getting into Scott Jennings here, but I have to say that Jillian Michaels' thing, um, really took off this week. Um, I'm gonna play the, the exchange, um, that she had and how you dealt with her. Let's listen.
He forgave me for saying it. It's not whitewashing slavery. So- Uh, he's not? He's not, no. Okay. He's, he's not. And you cannot tie imperialism and racism and slavery to just one race, which is pretty much what every single exhibit does. But let's talk about the fact that when you look- In the United States- Let's talk about the fact- ... anti-slavery, the anti-slavery movement in terms of- I mean, United s- slavery in America was a system of White supremacy. Do you know that only less than 2% of White Americans owned slaves? But it was a system of White supremacy. Do, do you realize that slavery is thousands of years old? You know, African-Americans were slaves and White people were their slave owners. Do you know who was the first race to, to try to end slavery? I didn't watch this. It's controversial. Okay. Well, what's controversial- I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Jillian, I'm, I'm very surprised-
... is- This is an extraordinary exercise in historical revisionism. Whoa. Uh, I, I'm really surprised-
I'm really surprised-
Historical revisionism? Do you realize that-
Jillian, I'm surprised that you're trying to litigate, um, th- who was the beneficiary of slavery and who was-
Install uListen to search the full transcript and get AI-powered insights
Get Full TranscriptGet more from every podcast
AI summaries, searchable transcripts, and fact-checking. Free forever.
Add to Chrome