Speculation Swirls Over Gavin Newsom’s ‘Strange’ Body Language In New Clip

The pressure of Los Angeles’s continued wildfires might be getting to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was noted for giving rather “strange” interviews about his thoughts on how to essentially rebuild entire swaths of the city from scratch.

As the battle to extinguish blazes in Palisades, Eaton, Woodland Hills, and other parts of America’s second-largest city head into its eighth day, Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass are facing a firing squad in the form of reporters eager to know their plans to make Angelenos whole after at least two dozen were killed and tens of thousands displaced. Considering the political cliff Bass has fallen off of — with even the New York Times writing negative pieces about her trip to Ghana during the fires — Newsom is probably in a more advantageous position, if only marginally and momentarily. Still, the presidential aspirant isn’t waiting around to see his legacy become similarly charred. In a recent interview, Newsom bobbed uncomfortably when explaining how his office is working to “stress test” the burned-down neighborhoods to help homeowners recover and doing its best to prevent real estate speculators coming in to find a deal in the rubble.

Asked by a Forbes reporter what he’s telling victims of the fires, Newsom replied, “We tell them we’re assessing all of that in real-time and we’re hiring an independent group to look, to stress test, not just the insurance market but the utility market in California as well.” In another interview, Newsom can be seen standing in front of the husk of a former home while recounting his conversation about speculators with the governor of Hawaii. “I was just talking to Josh Green, the governor down in Hawaii who had some ideas around some concerns he has around speculators coming in, buying up properties and the like,” he sputtered. “So we’re already working with our legal teams to move those things forward, and we’ll be presenting those in a matter of days, not just weeks.”

But it was the Democrat’s awkward shoulder movements that caught the eye of viewers who said his “strange body language” might be a sign that the pressure is becoming too much. Video of one interview, shared on X, immediately kicked off a long thread of followers mocking Gov. Newsom for his stilted style, including an AI-inspired version of Newsom singing along to the rhythm of bongo drums. Others had plenty to say as well, noting it’s rare for the sharp-tongued critic of President-elect Donald Trump to run out of one-liners and resort to theatrics to make his point.

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