California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom made a rare appearance on Fox News Monday night.
Newsom sat down with the network’s veteran primetime host Sean Hannity in Sacramento, where he admitted to being a frequent viewer of Hannity’s show.
“I think we need more of that cross-politicization (ph). We need more of these kind of conversation and we need to not just, you know, accuse each other of misleading the American people, but I think confront each other in the context of providing opportunities to address some of the facts that are often omitted in terms of the conversations and topics we choose to pick up,” Newsom told Hannity during the live to tape interview.
As pointed out by Politico, the process started with a text sent by Hannity, who appealed to the governor by noting that the two of them “— both silvering Irish Catholics — had known each other for years. He wanted to sit down and chat about real issues, mano-a-mano.”
This was Newsom’s first Fox News appearance since 2010, when he was the mayor of San Francisco. The interview presented an opportunity for Newsom to step out of his media comfort zone and take his message directly to a predominately conservative audience that views the Golden State and his policies in a particularly negative light.
During the interview, Hannity and Newsom spared over President Joe Biden’s physical and mental fitness, whether people have asked Newsom to run for the presidency, immigration, taxes, California’s Covid response, and the economy.
The two had much to discuss, so much so that the interview was broken up into two parts, with the second half set to air later in the week.
Watch the Hannity Newsom interview here.