Jennifer Siebel Newsom Lectures Trump on Misogyny While Missing the Entire Point

Let’s get one thing straight right from the start. When Donald Trump calls someone a disgrace, he’s usually responding to something they’ve done, not what chromosomes they happen to carry. But Jennifer Siebel Newsom, California’s self-appointed guardian of all things gender equity, wants you to believe that Trump’s heated exchange with Norah O’Donnell on 60 Minutes was really about the president’s deep-seated hatred of women. Give me a break.

Here’s what actually happened. O’Donnell sat across from the President of the United States and read aloud from a manifesto written by a would-be assassin who called Trump a rapist, pedophile, and traitor. She amplified the deranged words of someone who wanted to murder people at a White House Correspondents’ Dinner. And when Trump pushed back hard against that editorial choice, suddenly he’s the villain?

The audacity is almost impressive. CBS News made a conscious decision to give airtime to the violent fantasies of a shooter, and Trump is supposed to just sit there nodding politely because the person reading those words happens to be a woman? That’s not how leadership works. That’s not how respect works either.

Siebel Newsom’s response drips with the kind of performative outrage that’s become standard fare in progressive politics. She gathered her family to watch the interview (because of course she did) and emerged shocked, just shocked, that Trump would speak with contempt to a journalist who was treating him with obvious contempt first. She diagnosed him with an “allergy to facts” while conveniently ignoring the actual facts of the exchange.

You know what’s really going on here? This is about protecting the media establishment from accountability. When journalists make questionable choices, like platforming a killer’s propaganda, they want immunity from criticism. And if that criticism comes from Trump, well, then it must be misogyny. It’s a convenient shield that prevents any real examination of journalistic ethics.

The term “internalized misogyny” that Siebel Newsom throws around is particularly rich. It’s one of those phrases that sounds intellectual but really just means “you’re not agreeing with my feminist interpretation of events, so you must hate women, including yourself if you are one.” It’s circular logic dressed up in academic language.

Trump has appointed women to some of the highest positions in government. He’s elevated female voices in his administration and his campaigns. But none of that matters when there’s a narrative to push. The man could staff his entire cabinet with women and he’d still get accused of misogyny the moment he disagreed with a female reporter.

What Siebel Newsom and her allies refuse to acknowledge is that treating someone differently based on their gender is actual sexism. Trump treats hostile journalists the same way regardless of whether they’re men or women. That’s equality. He called Jim Acosta worse things than he called O’Donnell, but nobody wrote op-eds about internalized misandry.

The bigger picture here matters too. We’re living through a moment when the media’s credibility is at historic lows, and stunts like reading from a shooter’s manifesto are exactly why. Americans are tired of journalists who think their job is to lecture and provoke rather than inform. When Trump calls that out, he’s speaking for millions of people who’ve had enough.

California’s First Partner can clutch her pearls all she wants. The rest of us see through it.

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