I’ve known about Gavin Newsom for a long time, ever since his father’s best friend, Gordon Getty (yes, that Getty), helped set him up with the PlumpJack Group, which opened the PlumpJack wine store, hotel, winery, and restaurants. It was that rarefied height that got Newsom started in politics as San Francisco mayor, where he made a national name for himself by issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples (a completely non-courageous act, unlike what Kim Davis did).
With that prominence, Newsom leveraged himself into the California governor’s office, where he’s run the state hard to the left. Through it all, though, he, like Pete Buttigieg, has used glib twaddle and bafflegab, along with sins of omission and commission, to hide his agenda.
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Newsom was in fine form during his four-hour-long interview with Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor who leans conservative, where Newsom appeared as part of his attempt to present himself to America as a centrist, not leftist, potential presidential candidate.
I have not listened to the interview. Life is too short, and I am too busy to spend time listening to four hours of Gavin Newsom. PJ Media’s Victoria Taft bravely listened to most of it and reported,
Gavin Newsom is in favor of gun control, but he's not. He presided over and encouraged the dumbest decriminalization of felonies, prompting massive theft rings to prey upon shop owners, causing a mass exodus of people and retail outlets, but California is one of the toughest on crime. He's not running for president, but he is.
He got bamboozled by the Trump administration on COVID, but his state lost BILLIONS in fraud. He got scammed, but he's a smart businessman. His state spent billions to solve homelessness, but billions are missing, and homelessness went up. Tech entrepreneurs and major companies left California, but they're coming back because of how well he's running the state. His regressive energy policies gave California more energy than ever!
There was little to no pushback, nor was there a scintilla of fact-checking, as Newsom held court for the four-hour show, offering up spin, distraction, and deflection against an unarmed host. In a way, Ryan did us all a favor by peacing out of his own interview by giving Newsom enough rope to hang himself so that we could get these gems.
What struck me about reports of the interview were two points Newsom made. One was his claim that California isn’t losing residents, it’s gaining them, with the implication that it’s a great place for Americans to be! The other was his insistence that, without illegal construction workers, the Pacific Palisades can never be rebuilt. Both are crazy talk.
Regarding population numbers, SFGATE reports,
Within the first few minutes of the interview, Ryan joked about Newsom being in town to hang out with the “92,000 Californians” that have moved to Tennessee. (Ryan’s show is taped in Tennessee.)
Newsom laughed and responded, “You’re hitting me right there man, the California exodus. By the way, complete bulls—t. Now, the last two years, we’ve seen significant growth in California’s population. So it’s reversed, and record-breaking tourism.”
Even SFGATE concedes that, in 2022 alone, 22,565 Californians moved to Tennessee.
I can’t speak to the record-breaking tourism, but what I can point out is where California’s population growth has come from—and it’s not from Tennessee or, indeed, any other American state. Instead, it’s from outside the country.
As of January 2025, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, which identifies as non-partisan, 27% of California’s population is foreign-born, with almost half that number from Latin America. The same study says that most are citizens, but that assumes that the study's authors know who the illegal aliens are—which is a silly assertion because, by definition, the illegal aliens are hidden from view, often with fake IDs, meaning that we either don’t know their numbers or they’re posing as legal immigrants.
In other words, the real point, which Newsom wanted to glide by, is that working Americans no longer want to live in California, which is filling up with takers. Per ChatGPT, ~14% of California residents get food stamps, ~40% are on Medi-Cal, and a quarter to a third get other welfare programs.
And then there was Newsom’s bizarre claim that the burned out areas in LA County cannot get rebuilt without illegal aliens:
Newsom says illegal aliens are the "backbone" of our economy and California cannot rebuild without them.
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 14, 2025
He also says they are not taking jobs from Californians.
41% of construction workers are illegals, but Gavin says: "I don't see many people like me jumping at those jobs." pic.twitter.com/bccaGg4o1Y
As Chris Boland has written, though, the problem with construction work is that leftists and Chamber of Commerce types have used illegal aliens to devalue construction work to the point that it’s not worth it for Americans to do it. As recent meat-packing experiences have shown, however, when the illegal aliens are gone and their slave-labor conditions are gone with them, Americans will show up.
Gavin Newsom doesn’t bother to hide the snake oil he’s selling. He oozes it. I’ve pointed out just two of his dishonest sales pitches. I’ll leave you with this legal maxim about witness testimony: Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus (false in one thing, false in everything).