Gov. Gavin Newsom will try anything once. Including a podcast. And pretending to be moderate.

In the first episode, released Thursday, Newsom sits down with conservative media figure Charlie Kirk from Turning Point USA.

Newsom waded into the issue of transgender athletes after Kirk mentions the recent news of a high school trans athlete in California who won a girls’ triple jump event.

“I think it’s an issue of fairness, I completely agree with you on that. It is an issue of fairness, it’s deeply unfair,” Newsom said.

“I’m not wrestling with the fairness issue. I totally agree with you,” Newsom said. “By the way, as someone with four kids, two daughters — and a wife that went, God forbid, to Stanford and played on the junior national soccer team … I revere sports. And so the issue of fairness is completely legit.”

None of this reverse virtue signaling actually changed policy.

The Trump administration hit California with a Title IX violation for allowing men to compete against women and proposed a settlement. California responded by suing the Justice Department and announcing that they intend to fight.

Gov. Newsom has remained quiet, but this wouldn’t be happening without his complicity. For that matter, Newsom’s Pride Month declaraton contained the same boilerplate defenses of the movement, including attacking the Trump administration “which denies the existence of transgender people altogether to the point of omitting the “T”.

Newsom’s moderate turn was fake and when it came down to actual policy, not podcasts, he stayed on course, and the only thing he accomplished was convincing everyone not to trust him.