California Gov. Gavin Newsom is quietly building a 2028 presidential operation modeled on Bill Clinton's triangulation strategy — the same playbook that tells voters what they want to hear while the donor class gets what it pays for. That means the man who ran California into the ground now wants to bring his formula to the rest of the country.

Newsom told Vanity Fair he routinely seeks Clinton's counsel and studies old footage of the former president. "I watch videos of Clinton. I seek his counsel, his advice, and even in his absence, do that. I've been a student of his from day one," Newsom said, according to Fox News. Clinton returns the interest with late-night phone calls, telling Newsom: "I just think you represent what they fear."

What they fear, exactly, is left unsaid. What Americans can see is California: empty storefronts, a power grid that shuts down during heat waves, families fleeing the state in droves, and a homelessness crisis that Newsom has managed to make worse at every level of government he's touched. Now he wants to scale it nationally.

Newsom is drafting what he calls "Project 2029" — a 36-page governing document that borrows its name from the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. The policy list reads like a progressive wish list: zoning reform, corporate tax changes, junk-fee regulations, new domestic tariffs, preschool programs, childcare caps, family leave, paid sick leave, child tax credits, industrial decarbonization, anti-monopoly enforcement, immigration changes, and whistleblower protections. "No one touches these," Newsom said of his pages. "These are my own little version."

What's missing from both the Vanity Fair profile and Newsom's pitch: any accounting of who funds the operation. Clinton's triangulation worked because it reconciled populist rhetoric with Wall Street and corporate donor demands — NAFTA, financial deregulation, telecom consolidation. Newsom, who has spent his career backed by San Francisco oligarch money and Silicon Valley interests, is following the same path. He insists he's a "disrupter" — "I've never been for the status quo," he told Vanity Fair — but his record in Sacramento tells a different story. The status quo under Newsom has been catastrophic for working Californians.

Newsom also said he will not run in 2028 if Kamala Harris enters the race, a curious bit of deference from a man who otherwise insists he's a fighter. Democratic strategist Doug Friednash told Fox News Digital that the party's drift to the far left could make its 2028 nominee "toxic" — a clear signal that the Clinton model of sounding moderate while governing for donors remains the establishment's preferred survival strategy.

The question for voters in 2028: when a man who wrecked one state says he's a "disrupter" and takes coaching from the president who perfected donor-first politics, what exactly does he plan to disrupt — and for whom?