Karol Markowicz Rips Gov. Newsom’s ‘Deepfake’ Law: It Is Scary that He Is ‘Attempting to Shut Down Speech with Which He Disagrees’

[Clip starts]
Newsom (voice-over): “Thanks to my leadership over the last several years, California has become a world leader in extremist left-wing governance.”
[Clip ends]
RUBIN: “Speaking of being bludgeoned, let’s jump over to where you live, Drew, California, because Gavin Newsom, who is an evil lizard person, as everyone knows, he is coming for the First Amendment. I don’t think this is going to work out that well for him, but check out this tweet from earlier in the week. We covered this. ‘I just signed a bill to make this illegal in the state of California. You can no longer knowingly distribute an ad or other election communications that contain materially deceptive content — including deep fakes.’ And what he’s referencing there, it is a video that Elon Musk retweeted. That was just an edited together version of something — of a bunch of Kamala Harris speeches to make it sound like she said some stuff she didn’t, although it made her sound a lot more sane and honest, actually. Karol, I get the inclination — as I covered this earlier in the week — I get the inclination to try to do some coverage when it comes to political ads. That does not Trump the First Amendment, however, and if they think that a law is going to somehow stop what is coming our way via AI and editing and everything else, like they’re just completely crazy.”
MARKOWICZ: “That’s right. Satire is covered by the First Amendment. That’s been established. I think that Gavin Newsom just is doing something that he thinks will help his party or his side. And I’m glad he solved all the other problems in California, obviously and he’s finally got to this.”
RUBIN: “Yeah.”
MARKOWICZ: “So I don’t think that this could possibly hold. I don’t think anybody can be arrested or charged with anything with Gavin’s bill. But it is scary that he’s attempting it. It’s attempting to shut down speech with which he disagrees. And that speech, again, covered by the First Amendment is satire. Maybe there needs to be more openness about the fact that it is satire. But I think a lot of people, if not everyone, understood that it was a joke.”
RUBIN: “Right. We can have some discussion about how they should label things or something, but what’s the mechanism to enforce that, obviously? But Drew, as the Californian here, sorry, that’s the last time I’ll say it —“
PINSKY: “Hang my head.”
RUBIN: “— what do you — what do you think he actually thinks he’s accomplishing here? The law won’t stand. There’s still 49 other states and you can’t stop this thing.”
PINSKY: “Well, I — I have very interesting reactions to this and some of them surprised me. And to your question, as goes California, so goes Canada and the E.U. So and now Brazil, too.”
RUBIN: “Right. Rught. Right.”
PINSKY: “So expect a lot. I think he thinks he’s a trendsetter. And all I think when he does something like this is this is the guy that destroyed businesses and locked down, destroyed young people, kept them out of school for two years. This is — this is insane. This is not a good person. I — I — I when the lockdown started, I was deferential. I said, all right, he’s preparing for the worst. We’ve got to get behind our leaders now. Now — now — it’s — I’m disgusted by all of this. But I have some very interesting reactions to this — to this bill. One was, huh, interesting that all the hoaxes that are primary platform issues in the Democratic campaign, all the Trump hoaxes were because of creative editing, essentially that version of AI from four or five years ago. Interesting. OK, fine. Number two, this even surprised me more. I looked at this and I thought, ‘Oh, man.’ Prior to Covid in 2019, I would have gone, yeah, they need to — they need to do this. We’ve got to let the government do their job and support this stuff. I literally would have been that way. I’m that guy.
I supported the Patriot Act. I said, we’ve got to do this. Come on. Now I’ve gone — this is where I’ve really gone the other direction, where it’s like we cannot give the government any more powers for anything because they will take advantage of it. They will abuse it. And things have gone way, way, way too far.”
RUBIN: “I do want to show you a very real video of Gavin Newsom. This is totally real.”
[Clip starts]
Newsom (voice-over): “Hi, I’m Gavin Newsom, the governor of California. This is a message for the people of America given in my authentically recorded non-AI voice. Thanks to my leadership over the last several years, California has become a world leader in extremist left-wing governance. My policies were so effective that almost 1 million people are now fleeing the state every year. We even ran out of U-Hauls. During the Covid pandemic, I locked everyone in their homes and shut down businesses for months. Not the French laundry, though. That’s my favorite restaurant. Last year, I cleaned up the dangerous, messy streets of San Francisco, you know, because Chinese Communist President Xi was coming and I really wanted to impress him. He’s my boss after all. This year, I signed legislation that allows me to take custody of your kid if you refuse to give him artificial hormones and chop off his genitals. Because if you don’t do that, you’re a bigot and bigots shouldn’t be allowed to have kids. I’ve also led the way in green energy by banning all cars that don’t run on electricity. Then I banned almost all the electricity. This is smart leadership. On my watch, the cost of living and homelessness have skyrocketed. Schools are failing. Drug dealers and human traffickers are pouring across the border. And poop has covered the sidewalks of San Francisco. This is the positive, joyful vision we offer as Democrats. That’s why I’m enthusiastically endorsing Kamala Harris for president in 2024. She’ll do to the country everything I did in California. Anyway, I’m California Governor Gavin Newsom and I approve this 100 percent real message, which is a recording of my voice without the assistance of any AI whatsoever. This isn’t a deepfake. And you can rest assured that it isn’t because I just signed an unconstitutional law outlawing deepfakes. No one would dare violate it. Thank you and science bless America.”
[Clip ends]
RUBIN: “That is from our friends over at the Babylon Bee, who at one time were in California. I don’t think they are any more. But putting aside the fact that it’s actually just like the Kamala video — there is more truth in that than in real Gavin Newsom ad.”