Gavin Newsom went on late-night TV and promised Democrats a wave big enough to end Donald Trump’s presidency as everybody knows it.

The studio audience ate up every word.

And Newsom tucked in one election night warning his own party should be careful about repeating.

Gavin Newsom Booked the Funeral Before Anybody Finished Voting

California’s governor sat down with Jimmy Kimmel on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and skipped the usual hedging politicians fall back on in the final stretch of a campaign.

“Donald Trump has a sell-by date in six days when his presidency ends as we know it,” Newsom said.

He didn’t stop there. “This is going to be a blue tsunami,” Newsom told Kimmel. “I’m not asserting something that’s not in evidence. You’re seeing all the early voting. It’s off the chart. The energy’s off the chart. People understand what’s at stake. It’s all on the line. Our founding fathers lived and died for this moment.”

The men who signed the Declaration of Independence pledged their lives against a king. Odd to hear that sacrifice recast as a warm-up act for a Democrat midterm forecast delivered from a talk show couch at 11:35 at night.

Newsom granted that the Senate remains “a legitimate open question.” The House, he said, is “a fait accompli.” Then came the line that gave the game away: “Finally, we’ll reinstate a co-equal branch of government, not a supine Congress like we know it today.”

Anybody who lived through 2018 knows what “co-equal branch” means in Democrat-speak. It means subpoenas, hearings, and a gavel aimed at the White House. And House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) recently said his party hasn’t ruled anything out on impeachment.

Nancy Pelosi spent 2018 waving off impeachment talk too. Then Democrats won the House and impeached Trump twice.

The Doubt Speech Comes With a Long Democrat Paper Trail

Kimmel, never one to let a softball go unthrown, fretted about how the administration would handle the results. Newsom had the answer ready.

“We see what he’s doing on a daily basis to literally suppress the vote, to set the conditions where he will then express doubt in the electoral outcome,” Newsom said. “The only way to defeat that is with margin. If we have a big enough margin in these races, he cannot contest those races.”

Newsom didn’t name one eligible American turned away from a polling place. He didn’t point to an order, a directive, or a plan on paper keeping a single citizen from casting a ballot. He just said it, and the audience clapped.

But the “doubt in the electoral outcome” part deserves a longer look, because Newsom’s party wrote the modern playbook on that one.

On January 6, 2017, Congress met to count the electoral votes that made Donald Trump President. Seven House Democrats rose to object, and they went after votes from nine states.

US Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) objected to Florida’s electors. US Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) objected to Georgia’s, and she now wants a Democrat-controlled House to dig back into January 6.

Then-Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA), from Newsom’s own state, stood up with this: “I object because people are horrified by the overwhelming evidence of Russian interference in our election.”

The late Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) went further. She rose to object over “massive voter suppression” before the chair cut off her microphone.

Massive voter suppression. Nine years later, Gavin Newsom reached for the same charge on ABC.

No senator signed any of those 2017 objections, so they died on the floor. Defenders call that harmless theater. Maybe so, but a party that stages that kind of theater on live television doesn’t get to lecture anybody about respecting a count.

And California’s own US Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) went further in 2005, joining with Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH) to object to Ohio’s electoral votes for George W Bush and forcing a separate debate in each chamber.

Hillary Clinton warned in October 2016 that Trump’s refusal to commit to accepting the results meant “he’s threatening our democracy.” By September 2019, she told CBS, “I believe he knows he’s an illegitimate president.”

Stacey Abrams lost the 2018 Georgia governor’s race by nearly 55,000 votes and never conceded. “I did win my election. I just didn’t get to have the job,” she said months later. Democrats rewarded her with the national response to the State of the Union.

What ‘Suppress the Vote’ Looks Like in Newsom’s Own Backyard

Newsom never said which federal moves he had in mind. The most visible one sits right in his own state.

Donald Trump sued California this month over roughly 20,000 people federal investigators flagged as likely noncitizens who received mail ballots. Federal lawyers asked courts to set those ballots aside until citizenship checks wrap up. Prosecutor Bill Essayli told the judge the government wants those envelopes separated, not canceled.

California officials fought it every step of the way. A Ninth Circuit panel tossed the emergency request 2-1 on procedural grounds, and the dissenting judge, Patrick Bumatay, put it plainly: “Stopping that practice for those identified as likely noncitizens is the bare minimum.”

Judge David O Carter, a Bill Clinton appointee, then refused to order the ballots set aside. Those envelopes now head toward the count with the rest.

That’s the backdrop when Newsom talks about suppression. A request to double-check suspected noncitizen ballots before they mix with everyone else’s apparently qualifies. Back in 2005, the bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission warned that “Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.” California mails one to every registered voter in the state.

Newsom Wants a Margin Big Enough to Bury the Questions

Read that “margin” line one more time. Newsom admits close races invite challenges. His fix is to win big enough that nobody can ask.

But he isn’t stopping at margin. “He’s not screwing around. There’s a ruthlessness of Donald Trump,” Newsom said. “So, again, with love and respect to my party, the Democratic Party, for things to change, we need to change. We’ve got to be more ruthless ourselves.”

California voters already got a preview of Newsom-style ruthlessness. His Proposition 50 shelved the independent redistricting commission those same voters created, all to hand Democrats about five more House seats.

He has been reading this tea leaf for months, too. Back in March, also on Kimmel’s couch, Newsom said Trump is “going to get crushed, shellacked, in the midterms. He is. He’s toast. And he knows it.”

Newsom also took a swipe at the President as “completely incurious. Not one question, no curiosity.” His own example of that came from a 20-minute phone call in which Trump wanted to talk about slapping tariffs on movies made overseas. A President chewing on how to protect American film jobs sounds like a pretty curious fellow, especially to anybody who has watched Hollywood ship production to Toronto and London for years.

None of this is happening in a vacuum. Newsom has said he’d “seriously consider” a 2028 run once the midterms end, and a late-night victory lap plays well with the donors who stay up for Kimmel. Maybe he just got carried away by a friendly crowd. Politicians do that.

Still, a party that objected to nine states’ electoral votes, cheered a candidate who never conceded, and now wants a margin wide enough to shut down questions has a short memory about who doubts election results. On January 6, 2017, the man holding the gavel had to shout down his own party, one state after another, until Joe Biden finally cut through the noise: “It is over.”

Sources: Breitbart News, “Gavin Newsom Tells Jimmy Kimmel ‘Blue Tsunami’ Will End Trump Presidency ‘As We Know It’”; Fox News, “Newsom predicts Trump is ‘toast,’ will drag GOP into midterm wipeout”; NPR, “Biden To Democrats Objecting To Electoral College Results: ‘It Is Over’”; CNN, Electoral College vote count objections, January 6, 2017; KING 5, “‘It is over’: Biden shuts down Jayapal’s object to vote certification”; PBS NewsHour, Congress certifies Donald Trump’s victory; TribLive, Paul Kengor, “When Democrats challenge presidential elections”; Fox News, Stacey Abrams claims she won Georgia governor’s race; KTVU, appeals court declines to rule on federal bid to set aside California ballots; Spectrum News 1, California noncitizen voting court; California Globe, DOJ presses Judge Carter to sequester suspected noncitizen ballots; Democracy Docket, DOJ again demands immediate block on California counting ballots.