For the last few weeks, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and his moonbatty press office account have been inundating social media followers with misleading and, in some cases, false crime data impressions.
The comparisons primarily have been between select California cities and certain red state cities, but they've also done state-to-state contrasts in an effort to try and show that California and its large blue cities have it more together on the crime issue than red states.
Left out of all of this, of course, is that some of the red state cities they cite are Democrat-run, like Memphis, TN, and St. Louis, MO. In other instances, Newsom and his staff of dutiful Baghdad Bobs were careful to cherry-pick only one type of violent crime - homicides - to make the comparisons, rather than look at violent crimes on the whole, which would greatly complicate the law and order image they're trying to project.
Further, Newsom's critics have long accused the Golden State of playing funny business with crime data, with alleged tactics like underreporting and reclassifying crimes, the latter of which was also alleged to have occurred in Washington, D.C.
Nevertheless, Newsom continued the comparisons during a briefing held Thursday to announce.... a surge of law enforcement officers in some of the same cities we were reliably informed by Newsom had things under control, as part of a "crime suppression" initiative:
...Newsom said he plans to send the state police to San Diego, Inland Empire, Los Angeles, Central Valley, Sacramento, as well as the San Francisco Bay Area.
[...]
"These operations will be targeted," Newsom said at a news conference flanked by the CHP commissioner. "They'll be data-driven. They'll be focused on the basis of intelligence gathering that's coming from different law enforcement agencies. On the basis of these existing task forces and existing relationships. And these will be unannounced efforts."
During the same presser, Newsom didn't give a very coherent answer as to why the surge was needed when crime was allegedly down by double digits in some of the areas that will see the surges. I mean, presumably, if crime is down to that extent, the local law enforcement teams should be able to handle it, right?
The kicker, however, came when a reporter smartly turned the tables on Newsom by asking him if initiating the law enforcement surge meant he believed crime was an issue in California after all. Newsom then proceeded to stumble through his non-answer before concluding the briefing:
Left out of Newsom's remarks was a thank you to President Trump for clearly inspiring him to do something more about tackling the crime problem than just virtue signaling about it on social media and podcasts, a phenomenon that some have called the "Trump effect":
Also left unmentioned was why Newsom has consistently opposed funding for Prop 36, an anti-crime initiative that Newsom did not support and in fact tried to keep off the ballot, but which overwhelmingly passed in 2024.
It was left out of both of his budget proposals for this year, but in a last-minute move, he agreed with state legislative leaders in mid-June as part of a budget deal to partially fund it, something Prop 36's proponents called a slap in the face:
What happened: The budget agreement Newsom reached with Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire includes $50 million for county behavioral health departments, $20 million for court costs and $15 million for pre-trial services, according to a legislative floor report. The spending plan also includes $15 million for public defenders' general use.
Why it matters: Newsom did not set aside implementation money in either of his two budget proposals this year, so it was unclear whether the initiative would get funded. The California District Attorneys Association, law enforcement and probation groups and some lawmakers have been pushing for state money to fund the new requirements associated with Prop 36. The lobbying effort even included some groups that fought the initiative but want to offset potential harms it could cause.
The $100 million allocated is a far cry from what supporters originally sought, which was said to be "between $250 million and $400 million in state funding."
But yeah, he's totally committed to fighting crime, y'all, Totally,
Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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