I caught my reflection in a spoon while I was eating my cereal, and I remember thinking “wow, you’re ridiculously good looking, maybe you could do that for a career.” —Derek Zoolander
Did the Gavin Newsom campaign think it was a good idea to turn to Vogue magazine for a glowing profile piece as perhaps a desperate attempt to counter the disastrous Atlantic magazine story that recently blasted the California governor who has 2028 presidential aspirations?
Whoever that campaign person was could be finding his (or her) job currently at risk due to the hilarious blowback that resulted from the glam paean that resulted in Newsom coming off as the Zoolander of politics as portrayed on Sunday by Maya Singer in “Gavin Newsom Is Setting His Own Rules.”
Just a brief sampling of some excerpts from the Vogue puff piece reveals why this boomeranged on Newsom by turning him into a laughingstock thoroughly mocked in much of the media, both news and social, as well as in much of the rest of the web.
He is embarrassingly handsome, his hair seasoned with silver, at ease with his own eminence as he delivers his final State of the State address.
…Newsom: lithe, ardent, energetic, a glimmer of optimism in his eye; Kennedy-esque.
…As he spoke, late-summer sun slanted in through the windows, bathing Newsom in an oh so California magic-hour glow.
…His actual molecular reality. Immaculate.
…Newsom sees himself as continuously “iterating,” a favorite word.
These are but a few examples from the puff piece that launched a thousand jests including a brutal yet funny takedown on GUTFELD!
It wasn’t just the short musings by Maya Singer that has unleashed the mirth but her longer observations as well:
His tone is temperate, but the words echo through the State Capitol’s Assembly chamber, the august backdrop for his speech. “Lining the pockets of the rich; crony capitalism at an unimaginable scale,” he goes on. “Rolling back rights…. Rewriting history.” Newsom shakes his head, seeming more mournful than angry. Seeming, yes, presidential. “None of this is normal.”
And things went from bad to hilariously worse when Singer describes Newsom’s memoir:
Newsom’s latest conversation-starter is his new memoir, Young Man in a Hurry. It’s not a manifesto, per se. You do come away with a hazy sense of Newsom’s politics—canny smudging, given his all-but-announced 2028 presidential run. The book sets him up as someone who fights, someone who dreams big, someone who sweats the details, someone with a desire to serve. These are not fixed ideological points; they leave room to maneuver. What the memoir mainly does is reassure you that Gavin Newsom is a person with frailties and failings. A man who had to search for himself.
“When language eludes you, identity eludes you, too. You start trying on costumes to see if they’ll fit,” he writes of his childhood struggles with undiagnosed dyslexia, one source of his confusion about who he was and where he fit in the world. Newsom became, by his own definition, a poser. Discussing the book, he paraphrases Oscar Wilde. “What’s the quote? ‘First you pose, then.…’ ” he shrugs demonstratively: Who knows? As in, who knows where you’ll go once you’ve peered behind your own mask. Which, in writing this book, Newsom says, is what he set out to do.
Not only is the entire article chock full of unintended humor but a lot more entertainment from it can be attained by reading the hilarious reactions to the puff piece such as this from both James Woods and U.S. senator from Florida Rick Scott:
“Let’s get this out of the way. He is embarrassingly handsome.” -Vogue Magazine Newsom fluffer
Yeah, so was Ted Bundy. https://t.co/Xi44nxLkTc
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) February 3, 2026
Former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany induced laughter merely by reading excerpts of Vogue hyping Newsom:
🚨 The words below are not parody. They are actual lines from a Vogue piece about Gavin Newsom…
🔹 “…late-summer sun slanted in through the windows, bathing Newsom in an oh so California magic-hour glow.”
🔹 I “was having a hard time taking in the man. His actual… pic.twitter.com/LiSTVRbme2
— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) February 3, 2026
Benny Johnson describes the Vogue story as a “total glaze job” in which Newsom’s many scandals and policy failures were carefully avoided despite the fact it was a lengthy article:
Vogue glazing Newsom won’t save him in 2028.
The people of California will remember him for his record.
Newsom turned the Golden State into a third-world Hellscape.
Besides, no one trusts a fashion magazine who refuses to acknowledge that we have a super model as First Lady. pic.twitter.com/VFHoKOHpeT
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 3, 2026
Yes, it was frustrating that Maya Singer somehow avoided mentioning the blemishes on Newsom’s record that would probably disqualify almost any other politician from ever holding office again but at least she did redeem herself by providing us with loads of unintentional comedy entertainment. As a result of her hype of the “embarrassingly handsome” candidate who is “bathing” in the “oh so California magic-hour glow,” Singer has given the public more than enough comedy material to keep us laughing right through until Election Day 2028.
