#PresidentNewsom trends on Twitter after California’s governor appears on Rachel Maddow Show

He must have made an impression. #PresidentNewsom is trending on Twitter the morning after California Gov. Gavin Newsom appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show.

While it’s too late for Newsom to join the 2020 presidential campaign trail, the idea of California’s governor sitting in the White House appeals to many left-leaning people on Twitter.

Actor Tom Arnold took to Twitter to praise Newsom, who went on Maddow’s show to announce that he has secured a contract for 200 million masks a month for emergency workers responding to the coronavirus.

“My president has been kicking butt!!!! #PresidentNewsom,” Arnold tweeted.

He wasn’t alone. Newsom’s appearance followed announcements that California would loan 500 ventilators to states that needed them more urgently for coronavirus patients, and that the state had reached an agreement to acquire hundreds of millions of N95 masks.

“#PresidentNewsom is a trend I can get behind. I am ready and willing to work the campaign. Moving to California three years ago was the best decision I ever made in my life,” wrote Anne Charity Hudley, director of undergraduate research at UC Santa Barbara.

Democrats dominate California politics. Newsom won his election in 2018 by 3 million votes. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton earned 4 million more votes than Republican Donald Trump in the Golden State.

Nadra Nittle, a reporter for CivilEats, praised Newsom not just for his handling of the COVID-19 emergency, but also for his 2019 decision to put a moratorium on the death penalty.

“#PresidentNewsom is trending b/c of his leadership during the coronavirus, but I also very much respect this governor for his 2019 decision to put a moratorium on the death penalty in California. ‘I think, if someone kills, we don’t kill. We’re better than that,’ he said,” Nittle wrote.

Some people wondered how the current president, Donald Trump, might react to #PresidentNewsom trending on Twitter, a platform Trump favors.

“#PresidentNewsom is trending right now. @realDonaldTrump must love seeing that!” wrote Justin Brooks, director of the California Innocence Project.

For his part, Newsom has offered praise to Trump for how the president has treated California during the COVID-19 crisis. “He said everything that I could have hoped for,” Newsom said about one of his conversations with Trump last month. “Every single thing he said, they followed through.”