Newsom says he'll weigh White House bid after 2026 midterms

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said this week that he’d “be lying” if he said he wasn’t thinking about running for president in 2028.

In an interview taped Thursday, CBS News’s Robert Costa asked Newsom about the prospect of running for president and whether it’s “fair to say, after the 2026 midterms, you're going to give it serious thought.”

"Yeah, I'd be lying otherwise. I'd just be lying. And I'm not — I can't do that,” Newsom said in response.

Costa told Newsom that, when he saw the California governor speaking with potential voters in South Carolina this summer, “I thought, ‘This guy might run for president.’”

Newsom laughed and said, “I have no idea.”

“The idea that a guy who got 960 on his SAT, that still struggles to read scripts, that was always in the back of the classroom — the idea that you even throw that out is, in and of itself, extraordinary,” Newsom continued.

“Who the hell knows,” he added. “I'm looking forward to who presents themselves in 2028 and who meets that moment. And that's the question for the American people.”

Newsom has emerged as one of the most high-profile opponents of President Trump’s since he returned to the White House in January.

In the interview, which aired on “CBS News Sunday Morning,” Newsom called the president an “invasive species” and a “wrecking ball" and nodding to the demolition of the White House’s East Wing, as well as to some of the president’s global policies.

“He's a wrecking ball, not just the symbolism and substance of the East Wing. He's wrecking alliances, truth, trust, tradition, institutions.”