California Governor Gavin Newsom sat down with an unlikely guest in the debut episode of his new podcast: Charlie Kirk, the MAGA influencer and Trump "enforcer" who became a key part of the president's campaign strategy of reaching younger male voters.Newsom, a Democrat who many expect is setting up for a 2028 presidential run, announced that he was launching a podcast last month, telling his party that they "need to change the conversation.""In the first few weeks, we're going to be sitting down with some of the biggest leaders and architects in the MAGA movement," Newsom said in his announcement.The governor's new show comes after President Trump's podcast campaign delivered major gains for the Republican Party in November. Dodging traditional interviews with mainstream outlets, Trump opted to appear on podcasts hosted by influencers, like Theo Von and Joe Rogan, to appeal to young male voters in 2024. The media gamble paid off, helping Trump shift young white and Latino men to the right by 22 points and 38 points respectively.Newsom's podcast also doubles as a notable pivot from the long-held Democratic strategy of ignoring voices in conservative media. Kirk's Thursday appearance marks the first of what Newsom has teased as a string of interviews with influential MAGA figures.Who Is Charlie Kirk?Kirk, a popular conservative influencer, co-founded Turning Point USA in 2012 at the age of 18. He has 6.1 million followers on TikTok, 5 million followers on Instagram and 4.7 million followers on X, formerly Twitter.On Thursday's episode, the 31-year-old Kirk described himself as having always been conservative. He said as he started to grow his organization, he noticed an "ideological imbalances" on a lot of college campuses. After aligning TPUSA to Trump's brand of populist conservatism in 2016, Kirk began ramping up the organization's presence at universities, often debating students on culture-war issues. Many of those debates have gone viral online.Kirk quickly became part of Trump's youth outreach, offering a fresh face for the MAGA movement. He became a frequent guess on Fox News, Newsmax and conservative radio shows. Kirk recalled that in 2021, TPUSA had a goal of moving young Americans to the right by 10 points in 10 years."We did it in four years, not 10, thanks to you guys," Kirk told Newsom.Newsom acknowledged Kirk's massive influence on Thursday, telling Kirk that his 13-year-old son wanted to skip school to see his dad's interview and that his college-aged niece, who is enrolled at the University of Southern California, told him how big of a crowd Kirk drew when he visited the school."The point, which is, you're making a damn dent," the governor said.What Did Gavin Newsom Say About Trans Athletes?Newsom, who has a long history of pioneering rights of LBTQ+ people in California, suggested that Democrats were wrong in allowing transgender athletes to participate in women's and girls sports."I think it's an issue of fairness, I completely agree with you on that. It is an issue of fairness — it's deeply unfair," Newsom said. "I am not wrestling with the fairness issue. I totally agree with you."Adding that his wife and daughter play sports, he said, "I revere sports, so the issue of fairness is completely legit."Newsom said over the last couple of years, he saw how Republicans have been able to highlight the issue of fairness."That's easy to call out, the issue of that," he said. "There's also a humility and grace that these poor people are more likely to commit suicide, have anxiety and depression, and the way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is an issue that I have a hard time with as well.""Both things I can hold in my hand, how do we address this issues with the kind of decency that's, you know, inherent with you but not always expressed on the issue, while at the same time, deal with the unfairness?" Newsom asked his guest.He told Kirk he agreed with him that the majority of Americans strongly favor laws that require trans athletes to participate on teams that match their biological sex, saying Democrats we're getting "crushed" by the issue. Various polls have shown as much as 80 percent of Americans agree that transgender females should not be allowed to play in girls' sports.The governor also called Trump's campaign ad targeting former Vice President Kamala Harris' support for gender-affirming care a "brilliant campaign commercial" that had "devastating" and "brutal" impacts on Harris' campaign. In the ad, Trump's campaign argued that he was for "you," while Harris was for "they/them." Newsom added that he's only been at one meeting where participants went around and stated their pronouns."It was a great ad and I don't say that lightly," Newsom said.Newsom Says Democrats Should Welcome Anti-Abortion voicesOn the podcast, Kirk argued that unlike the GOP, which has "immense and vocal and public spats all the time," the Democratic Party was too fixated on an "unhealthy purification process.""We fight about foreign policy — Look at Ukraine, right? We're talking about primary challenging some of these senators that were meeting Zelensky last week," Kirk said. "The Democrat Party would never do that. I think that's a symptom of an underlying thing."Speaking about how Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, two former Democrats who now sit in Trump's Cabinet, found themselves cast out of the party, Kirk said, "You guys see how you have an unhealthy purification process, where eventually you're just left with just a 31 percent approval rating.""If Democrats are serious about being a majority party ever again, when somebody has a disagreement — for example, if there's a pro-life Democrat, is there a place for a pro-life Democrat in the Democrat Party?" Kirk asked the governor."There should be," Newsom responded. "On principle, there should be. Absolutely. That's a deeply-held personal point of view, god bless. And I say this as one of the biggest champions for reproductive freedoms on the planet."How Donald Trump Won Young Americas, According to KirkKirk argued on Thursday that Trump has become such a large cultural phenomenon because he was able to become a "figure of an American comeback story" that resonated with a lot of young people who were feeling discouraged by the state of the country."It's the first time in America's history that a 30-year-old is going to have it worse off than their parents. It's a breakdown of the social [compact]," Kirk said."The message that was largely being fed to a lot of young people was 'Lower your expectations. You're not going to have the same American Dream that your parents would have,'" he said. "And we saw this as an opportunity, especially with young men."Kirk went on to argue that Trump, by virtue of his ability to fight back against the lawsuits and criminal cases against him, the mainstream media and two assassination attempts, "personified what a lot of young people, especially a lot of young men, wanted back in their politics, which was an ascendant, rebel attitude against these institutions that have failed them so miserably."Kirk on Why Democrats Can't Replicate MAGA's Podcast StrategyWhile Kirk credited Democrats with having a better organizing and get-out-the-vote effort, he said Republicans still had the better message. The influencer applauded Newsom for embracing longform podcasts, but argued that Democrats could not survive in such environment."It's too unscripted, it's too masculine, honestly," Kirk said.When Newsom challenged him on what that meant, Kirk replied, "To go into the wilderness with no rules and duel it out and see who is better and stronger.""If you want to earn the respect of forgotten America, you have to show them you can intellectually joust with no script, no hard breaks, no producers in the ears, no teleprompters, that's where new media is going," Kirk said.Newsom chuckled as he responded, "Love that.""What Democrats are doing is you're still playing in a very old, hyper-sanitized media environment, and my advice is, you've got to go where it's unpredictable, where it's treacherous, where it's dangerous," Kirk told Newsom."It's by no coincidence that out of the longform podcasting genres, the top 10, 8 of them are conservative or center-right, Rogan, Megyn Kelly, Theo Von, the Paul brothers, our program, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh," Kirk said. "There's a singular one on the left, which is Pod Save America, which is just like a bunch of Obama bros agreeing with each other for 90 minutes and saying, 'We're not very smart.'"'This is Gavin Newsom' Podcast: How to ListenNewsom's podcast, "This is Gavin Newsom" is available on iHeart Radio, Spotify, Apple, Pandora and Amazon. Episode clips and updates are also available on the governor's social media pages."Governor Newsom is going solo and diving into the real issues that matter—government, politics, affordability, quality of life, and the cultural moments shaping our world. No spin, no script, just real talk about what impacts listeners most. Tune in and be part of the conversation," a press release for the show stated.