Roe: Exes Gavin Newsom and Kimberly Guilfoyle reflect bitter national divide

Kimberly Guilfoyle, engaged to Donald Trump Jr. and dubbed the “prom queen of MAGA land,” on Friday tweeted out praise for former President Donald Trump for appointing the three conservative justices to the Supreme Court who helped overturn Roe v. Wade.

Soon after, her ex-husband, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, decried the court’s “attack on American freedom,” and said the justices were “hell bent on pushing a radical ideological agenda.”

With the 6-3 ruling Friday eliminating the constitutional right to abortion after almost 50 years, and leaving women to face near total bans on abortion in half the U.S. states, many expect the divide between a vastly disparate Red America and Blue America to grow even more stark.

In some ways, that divide is illustrated by the vastly disparate reactions to the decision Friday from Newsom and Guilfoyle, who weren’t just husband and wife in the early 2000s but political partners.

Guilfoyle joined her fiancé, Trump Jr., Trump’s oldest son, in praising the 45th president for his three Supreme Court appointments, which, as Trump Jr. said, gave conservatives “our biggest win from the Supreme Court in a generation.”

Guilfoyle also tweeted: “This wouldn’t have happened if President Trump didn’t appoint 3 Conservative SCOTUS Justices. Life wins!”

Newsom, meanwhile, called the court’s decision “dangerous” and said it was a “dark day in America.”

Twenty years ago, Guilfoyle and Newsom seemed to be on the same ideological page. Both born in liberal San Francisco, the pro-business Democrat Newsom and top  prosecutor Guilfoyle became the glittering couple of the city’s high society during their five-year marriage. Guilfoyle campaigned with Newsom when he successfully ran for San Francisco mayor in 2003, and she served as his first lady as he began his rise as a star in Democratic politics in California and nationally.

But even before their 2006 divorce, Newsom and Guilfoyle went their separate ways as a bicoastal couple, as she relocated to New York City to become a cable news legal analyst and eventually a conservative Fox News pundit.

Fast forward to the spring before Newsom was elected California governor in November 2018; That’s when Guilfoyle revealed her immersion in Trump’s hard-right political orbit by starting a relationship with Trump Jr.

Guilfoyle and Trump Jr. became the “prom king and queen of MAGA land” as they toured the country together and campaigned for Trump in the 2020 presidential election. At the Republican National Convention, Guilfoyle literally yelled out a dark speech in which she warned that Democrats would destroy the country. She also trashed her home state, saying liberals had turned California, “a place of immense wealth, immeasurable innovation and an immaculate environment,” into “a land of discarded heroin needles in parks, riots in streets and blackouts in homes.”

Guilfoyle has long insisted that her conservative turn, which includes opposing abortion, is nothing new. She opened up in a 2018 interview with Breitbart News about how she had never shared Newsom’s liberal politics and been a registered Republican since her undergraduate days at UC Davis. She jokingly complained about Thanksgiving family dinners with Newsom’s liberal family: “You want to hear silent screaming!”

Now, Guilfoyle is celebrating her prospective father-in-law’s appointment of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Trump Jr. also shared a statement from his father, who used fighting words to explain how this decision was  essential to saving the future of America.

Meanwhile, Newsom also expressed concerns the state of the country, as well as offering up a different vision of America. He also used fighting words as he spoke about the deep ideological divide in the country and its geographical implications. With the court’s ruling, there are now huge swaths of the country where women have lost access to abortion.

In a videotaped statement, Newsom and the governors Washington and Oregon, Jay Inslee and Kate Brown, respectively, said they were working together to ensure women’s access to reproductive care.

“The Supreme Court has stripped women of their liberty and let red states replace it with mandated birth,” Newsom said on Twitter. “This is an attack on American freedom. CA, OR and WA are creating the West Coast offensive. A road map for other states to stand up for women.”

“Time to fight like hell,” he added.