Victor Davis Hanson: The Law Has Finally Caught Up to Gavin Newsom

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.  

We’ve talked a lot about Gavin Newsom and California in particular. Apparently, Gavin Newsom will be running for president in 2028. I don’t know whether his slogan will be, “I will remake the United States in the way that I remade California.” Let’s hope not. 

But he’s now, suffering some scandal allegations, and it’s intrinsic—or it’s no accident, given California is a one-party state. I mean that literally. Seven of 52 congressional seats are Republican—13%. Both houses of the legislature, Assembly and Senate, have super Democratic majorities. There has not been a statewide Republican for well over a decade. We have not had a Republican governor in 15 years. 

The vast majority of superior, appellate, and Supreme Court appointees are now, left-wing—maybe even Democrat is an unfair characterization. They’re very hard Left.

The point I’m making is there is no deterrence for illegal behavior in California, given the mass exit and odyssey of conservatives out of state, perhaps 10 or 12 million in total over the last few years.  

So the population is increasingly left-wing, and it’s reflected in its politics. 

Gavin Newsom had a problem. Dana Williamson was his chief of staff for years. She has just been convicted of mail and bank fraud. She was using campaign monies when she used to work for the, ironically, the would-be replacement of Gavin Newsom. 

 Xavier Becerra is running against Steve Hilton, the Republican, for the governorship of California, and she was draining his campaign fund for personal use. 

And apparently, he is pleading that he didn’t have any idea this was going on. You can believe that if you would like. 

In any case, the legislature is all left-wing. The government is all left-wing. So you have a uniparty, and there’s no oppositional press; there’s no oppositional money. Silicon Valley—$14 trillion market capitalization—all left-wing. Los Angeles Times, such as it is. San Francisco Chronicle—left-wing, etc., etc., etc. 

The latest accusation, though, is really disturbing. In the last 10 or 15 years, the state of California has given $600 million plus to so-called nonprofit charities. If you examine these charities, they’re almost exclusively left-wing and reflect the political makeup of the California legislature and the recent governors. 

And how it works is simply they pick out certain environmental, ethnic, political activist groups, and then they use our state money and endow them. And then those groups further the Democrat, left-wing control of the state by doing things like suing Republican developers or stopping the oil industry or trying to get subsidies for their particular favorite solar panel or wind project.  

And then, of course, they give money back to legislators and the governor. 

In Gavin Newsom’s case, the particular charge is he’s directly responsible for routing over $350 million in our taxpayer money to his favorite charities, which would be bad enough because some of those charities have donated back to him.  

But his wife is associated with two charities, one of which she gets a salary of $150,000-plus a year, and some of the charities that he has routed money to have routed money back to her. 

And then another case, a charity that she had has been the beneficiary of $4 million. So basically, Mr. and Mrs. Newsom go home at night, and they discuss how her charity should spend $4 million that Gavin gave. Gavin says to his wife, Jennifer, how’s my $4 million of the taxpayers’ money being used? Jennifer says back to Gavin, pretty well. We’re promoting left-wing causes, and we may want to donate to your cause for reelection. That’s how it works. 

Is this criminal? He’s under investigation and may be indicted. Gavin Newsom is furious. He’s very, very angry because he says that this is lawfare. 

Gavin, I wanna correct you. Lawfare was when Joe Biden was president, and he was aware of what you were doing and routing these state funds to your favorite charities, along with the legislature, and he knew that your wife was a recipient as a director of one of these charities and a director of another at no pay.  

And yet no one investigated you because you were a left-wing governor in a left-wing state during a left-wing presidency. 

Now there’s no cover, no exemption, and now you’re going to face scrutiny, and we have no idea whether these allegations are true or not. 

I will add one final part—the end shot, Gavin.  

You have a history of ignoring issues that are destroying this state. What I’m getting at is you shut down the entire state during the COVID epidemic, and you shut down K through 12, and you made the argument to us that this was an existential threat and that no one could leave their home. Even though children were not susceptible to a serious case of COVID, you kept them at home. 

And then you went down to a sporting event in Southern California without a mask, and you were out in the public. You were caught with lobbyists in the ultra, ultra-exclusive French Laundry Northern California restaurant, violating the very terms that you imposed on us. 

And what am I getting at? While you’re directing all of this money and you’re all over the country campaigning—and you’ve been campaigning for two or three years—and when your social media brags it’s going to hit [Donald] Trump in the mouth, and you’re going to do this, and it uses all these four-letter words, you’re not doing your job. 

You don’t have any idea how we’re going to get out of this high-speed rail boondoggle that has spent $16, $17 billion without one foot of track.  

We’ve been over a year of a tremendously devastating fire in one of the most historic neighborhoods in California, the Pacific Palisades fire. There hasn’t been any rebuilding. You have had no plan for that. 

Under your directorship, we’ve had three or four existential forest fires in the Sierra Nevada mountains—no change in course.  

We have the highest gasoline taxes and the highest gasoline prices. You’re bragging that you’re stopping oil and gas exploration and production in one of the wealthiest oil and gas states naturally in the country.  

You’ve shut down the timber industry. You’ve done all of this, and yet you’re not even addressing any of the problems. 

You have no solutions, and you’re campaigning when you’re under a cloud of allegations of rampant fraud. What’s your future? Will you still be a candidate for president? 

Again, I’ll start where I finished. Your only slogan that you can run on is, “I will try to make the United States a new country just like I tried to make California a new state.”  

And I think that’ll get you zero support when you’re honest about what your intentions are. 

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