Gavin Newsom Abandons Californians for 2028 White House Delusions

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. I want to talk about a familiar subject to all of you: Gavin Newsom, the governor here in my home state of California.

Lately, Gavin has redirected his energies from the crises of California to his aspirations to run for president in 2028. He was in South Carolina, which is the first big primary, campaigning. I don’t think that’s a good look to go to, pretty much, a red state, given the status of California. But nevertheless, he did that.

He’s now inserted himself into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations crisis in California and is siding with the protesters that are trying to obstruct ICE. And he has a very incoherent position.

He doesn’t really tell us what his attitude is about the illegal immigrant community in California, which is the largest illegal alien group of any state in the Union, here in California. He’s siding with the illegal aliens. He doesn’t tell us why he’s doing that. He has no reference to the 10 million to 12 million who came in illegally under President Joe Biden, in which Gavin was very silent.

And I guess the supposition is that Gavin thought it was quite moral for 12 million people to break the law, but it’s quite amoral for somebody to try to rectify the situation and enforce the law.

But while he is doing his podcast and he is attacking President Donald Trump, he called Donald Trump “scum.” He went after Vice President JD Vance for going to Disneyland, said that was hypocritical, given his criticisms of California.

You can see he’s flailing. He is desperate. And he’s a social media creature now. He’s on X all the time. He’s doing these podcasts. Although, he’s pivoted from the Steve Bannon-, Charlie Kirk-type, and he is going more left wing now because he thinks he has to win the primaries first, then he will pivot back.

But here’s my point. We’re facing an existential crisis in California. Newsom, there have not been very many building permits in Pacific Palisades. That is a catastrophe. And that’s in addition to the catastrophe of your governance, when you did not allow the gleaning of hills and fuel and brush that caused the fire.

And when Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was overseas in Ghana, and the water and power director closed down and did not fix or repair a reservoir, and when the vice mayor phoned in a bomb threat and was under house arrest, these were the conditions that led to that disaster. You’re not addressing them.

I just drove six hours on the California freeway system, Newsom. In 2025, we have 40 million people and we have 40 million cars. Fifty years ago—roughly 45 or 50 years ago—we had 20 million people and 4 million cars. And guess what? When I went down the 99, I-5, the 101, there are still large swaths that are two lanes. They have not changed in 50 or 60 years. And there is public domain space where they could have been enlarged. You haven’t done anything.

You were on the San Francisco City Council. You were mayor of San Francisco. You were the lieutenant governor. You were governor. In some capacity or other, you’ve been almost 30 years in a position of responsibility. You’ve never been an advocate.

These are some of the most dangerous bloody highways in the world. Meanwhile, we have wasted $15 to $20 billion on high-speed rail. And not one foot of track has been laid. If we were to gift high-speed rail over to California and said, “From Bakersfield to Merced, it’s free; we built it,” it would still lose money. No one wants to go from Bakersfield to Fresno any faster than they can on Amtrak. It’s a disaster. Why don’t you address that?

We are looking at an—we have the highest gas taxes, Newsom. And now you’ve had a scheduled 60-cent or more increase. It’s already started, a cent and a half. Why are we doing this? We have the highest gas taxes. And yet, we’re sitting on the Monterey Shale deposits. We could be one of the greatest gas producers—natural gas and petroleum. Instead, we’re importing petroleum from Saudi Arabia. And the price of gas, when I filled up today—when gas has gone down by two or three—was $5.50 in California. The poor can’t afford that.

Our energy is out of sight, 30 to 40 cents a kilowatt. And this is before the AI boom will really deplete us. We’re not building traditional natural gas or more nuclear generation or hydroelectric. The solar farms are not an answer. They do not create energy in the evening. The wind turbines, they all have to be subsidized. They’re not giving us reliable energy. And it’s very expensive to keep doing that.

You’re in South Carolina, but we have 13.3% income tax rate. It’s the highest in the nation. Can you explain why we have that and we still had this massive $77 billion deficit to start the year?

We have the highest number of illegal aliens in the country in California. Twenty-seven percent of the California resident population was not born in the United States. This is an enormous challenge of assimilation and integration. You’re not addressing it.

Twenty-one percent of Californians live before the poverty line. You’re in South Carolina. You’re on podcasts with your friends. You’re in a fight with Donald Trump. You’re going down to help ICE be impeded. And we have the highest poverty rate in the United States.

We have one-third of all people in public assistance here. One out of every two births in California is on Medi-Cal. Forty percent of the entire population is on Medi-Cal. Why would you try to impede ICE from deporting people who are here illegally, using these services and crowding out the availability to your own state residents who are legal?

In other words, you look at a state that is in complete free fall, it is a catastrophe, and rather than addressing transportation, energy, poverty, housing, gasoline, what are you doing? You’re campaigning for president. And you’re in Twitter wars with the president of the United States. And you’re defending the catastrophic governance in Los Angeles. And you’re trying to impede the enforcement of a law that, if it was enforced, you would be the biggest beneficiary.

Please stop this because California is a disaster and you, more than anyone in the last 30 years, are responsible for it.

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