Maybe he's being truly gallant, or maybe he's lying. But Governor Gavin Newsom said in a new CNN interview that he won't run for president in 2028 if his former colleague Kamala Harris decides to run again.It's hard to take this at face value, just given the fact that Gavin Newsom has seemed like he was running for president half his life — and has been doing so in earnest, unofficially, for at least three years. But during this absurd interview conducted while fly fishing in Montana, with Jake Tapper, Newsom says he will not run for president in 2028 if former Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris decides to run again."I wouldn’t run if she ran," Newsom says, matter-of-factly. "I wouldn’t waste everyone’s time. Who needs that?"Is this strategy? Is this psychological warfare? We will have to wait and see.There has been plenty said already about whether this country, such as it is, will ever elect a woman president, and whether Harris would do significantly better if she weren't running against Donald Trump, and had a proper amount of time to campaign.Certainly there are many people in Democratic leadership who would like to wipe the slate clean, even if Harris has name recognition and even if she only lost the 2024 election by a couple million votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. And everyone is still so traumatized by that loss — and everything we've had to endure because of it — that it may poison the fundraising pool for Harris from the get.The New York Times surmises that Newsom may have several cards up his sleeve, one being that he genuinely doesn't believe Harris is going to run again. But the other, more likely card: Newsom's simply planning to announce his candidacy before she does, and therefor have plausible deniability about going back on his word.It's been said enough that Newsom and Harris don't have the warmest of friendships, so all of this makes some sense. And last October, they both sort of simultaneously made moves to suggest they want to run in 2028.A spokesperson for the governor, Bob Salladay, tries to spin it the other way, though, telling the Times, "They’ve been friends long enough that they wouldn’t play cat-and-mouse games on something this important."We've heard versions of that before with regard to political races, and I wouldn't rule out further cat-and-mouse shenanigans, even if Newsom and Harris would have to go to the some of the same "friends," as he alludes to in the CNN interview, when it comes time to fundraise.Look for one or the other of these two California Democrats to make their candidacy official sometime after the midterms, or maybe early next year.Previously: Newsom to Give 'Declaration of Election Independence' Speech to Upstage Trump on July 4th ...read more read less