The Hidden Lesson From Katie Porter’s Media Meltdown

At long last, Katie Porter has gotten what she’s always wanted and believes she deserves: attention.

Last week, Google searches for “Katie Porter” hit an all-time high, according to CNN’s Harry Enten. The spike followed Porter, a Democrat candidate for California governor, self-immolating and then walking out during an interview with CBS local news reporter Julie Watts. But Porter’s latest hysterics point to a truth about the Democrat Party hiding in plain sight.

The interview turned when Watts asked Porter, “What do you say to the 40% of California voters—who you’ll need in order to win—who voted for [President Donald] Trump?”

Porter responded with all the condescension she could muster: “How would I need them in order to win, ma’am?” Porter then turns her head 90 degrees to the left and mocks Watts by scoffing directly at the camera.

While on first glance, it appears Porter’s patronizing tone is warranted, Watts’ question was completely legitimate because of California’s electoral system. California has jungle primaries, which means that all candidates, regardless of party, compete in a single primary, and the top two vote-getters advance to the general election.

The pool of California gubernatorial candidates is highly saturated, with five prominent Democrats and three main Republicans currently campaigning. Recent polls had Porter with a substantial lead. In an Emerson College poll, Porter captured 18% of the vote, and the two next highest performers were Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, with 12% and 7% respectively. A Citrin Center/Politico poll from August had Porter leading with 21%, again followed by the major Republican challengers Bianco (15%) and Hilton (10%). And a UC Berkeley poll from August had Porter at 17% support, followed by the Riverside Sheriff Bianco at 10% and former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra at 9%. In each of these polls, large swaths of the California electorate remain undecided.

When those voters do decide, most of them Democrats, it’s very possible Porter could be facing off against another Democrat in 2026 if the field of Republican candidates does not narrow down to one because Democrats’ registration advantage in the Golden State. In that scenario, the Trump 2024 voter choosing the lesser of two evils becomes the difference maker.

When Watts asked about a Democrat versus Democrat general election, Porter replied, “I don’t intend that to be the case.” And when asked how she’d avoid squaring off against another Democrat, Porter claimed she had “support already in terms of name recognition” and that, because she represented a purple district in Congress, she has “won Republican votes before.”

Porter’s explanation did not satisfy Watts: “But you just said you don’t need those Trump voters,” the journalist replied. 

“But you asked me if I needed them to win,” Porter shot back. “I feel like this is unnecessarily argumentative,” she added, cutting Watts off. Two minutes later, Porter would walk off set.

Last week’s incident was only the latest in a long train of abuses suffered by those who test Porter’s patience. 

An ex-staffer recently told the New York Post that Porter would often refer to her staffers in the third person while deriding them in front of others. This toxic behavior was particularly on display when Porter was building her all-important “name recognition” with on-camera appearances. 

“If anything went wrong, she would flip on a dime,” Sasha Georgiades, a Navy veteran who worked in Porter’s office from 2020 to 2022, told the New York Post. Georgiades recalled a time when Porter berated a staffer for how she set up a shot for a Facebook video. 

“She’s talking to me while the other girl is in the room, telling me, ‘I don’t even know why she’s here. I can do this job better than her.’ And this is, like, very inappropriate. The girl’s in the room with us,” Georgiades said. Porter’s campaign didn’t immediately return The Daily Signal’s request to comment on the allegations made in the New York Post.

Porter’s Jekyll-and-Hyde behavior was also on display during a 2021 video call with then-Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. When a staffer came into the background of Porter’s shot to correct her on a crucial fact, Porter yelled, “Get out of my f—ing shot!”

For those who have tracked Porter’s career closely, these outbursts come as no surprise because her time in public life has appeared more theatrical than political.

In 2019, Porter made headlines for showing up to work on Capitol Hill dressed as Batgirl on Halloween. That day, the House was set to vote on impeaching Trump.

In a 2021 congressional hearing that featured climate activist Greta Thunberg, Porter said her 9-year-old daughter has told her that “the Earth is on fire and we’re all going to die soon.”

After Trump won the 2024 election, Porter went on Fox 11 Los Angeles and said that her daughter was crying because Trump threatened her 12-year-old daughter’s access to abortion. “Mom, Trump won,” Porter recalled her daughter saying. “Trump’s going to win, and what if I get raped and I need to have an abortion?”

All of these stunts failed to earn Porter the attention she so desperately craves. Thanks to walking out on CBS News, she finally has it. But it may have cost her career.

More from CNN’s Enten: “I think that Katie Porter is making history because she has potentially annihilated her chances to be the next governor of California, more so than any other candidate I’ve ever seen so quickly.”

Enten then showed Kalshi’s prediction market odds to be the next governor of California from before and after Porter’s CBS interview. On Oct. 7, Porter had a 40% chance of succeeding Newsom. By Oct. 10, her chances had fallen to 16%, 11 points behind Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., who has not yet declared a candidacy for governor. 

Now, corporate media outlets are running stories with headlines similar to Politico’s “7 times politicians imploded in TV interviews.” The featured image on that story is none other than Katie Porter.

But perhaps the most important lesson that can be learned from Porter’s implosion is that there are no more moderates in the Democrat Party.

The woman who taught her daughter to believe we are all about to die because of climate change and cry about not being able to get an abortion was the Democrat candidate in a district considered a toss-up.

When Democrats think of a candidate who can win a purple district, they conjure up a middle-aged woman prepared to mount the pulpit armed with the gospel of gender studies and the catechism of climate alarmists and deliver a fire-and-brimstone screed.

The End Times messaging is better suited for Revelation than Riverside. Judgment Day has come—at least for Porter’s ambitions. And that same judgement could soon be coming for the Democrat Party if the simultaneously self-indulgent and insensible Porter is the Democrats’ idea of a moderate.