CNN called out Gavin Newsom after he claimed that nobody in his office has ever said the word “Latinx.”
The network ran an eyebrow-raising series of clips showing that at least one person had used the gender-neutral word—Newsom himself.
The California governor sought to distance himself from accusations of being “woke” in an interview on his podcast with MAGA commentator Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA. The word is used as a gender-free alternative to “Latino” and “Latina.”
“Not one person ever in my office has ever used the word ‘Latinx,’” Newsom insisted.
But CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront begged to differ. CNN KFile senior editor Andrew Kaczynski highlighted a series of four clips of Newsom talking about “the Latinx community” between 2020 and 2023.
“We did find someone who used it repeatedly in his office. Let’s take a listen to this,” Kaczynski said.
“You see there, that is a lot of use of ‘Latinx’ by him for somebody who said that nobody in his office has ever used that phrase,” he added after the examples aired.
CNN also went after Newsom for intimating he had nothing to do with a California law allowing transgender athletes to take part in women’s sports.
“It turns out in 2014, years before I was governor, there was a law established that established the legal principles that allow trans athletes in women’s sports,” Newsom told Kirk. “But the issue of fairness is completely legit. It is an issue of fairness and I think Democrats have lost that.”
“In that statement, he’s kind of making it sound like he wasn’t involved in this at all,” said Kaczynski. “He’s like, ‘Oh it was 2014, years before I was governor.’ Like, you mean when you were the lieutenant governor. When you actively defended and praised that law?”
“Latinx is not a term that is regularly used by the administration,” Newsom’s office told CNN.
