If he’d tweeted this two days later, everyone would understand he was simply making a really, really dumb April Fool’s Day joke.
People are fleeing these countries out of desperation—trying to escape violence & corruption. Closing down our border or ending foreign aid won't solve anything.
I’ll be traveling to El Salvador next week to hear directly from folks about how CA can help. https://t.co/kydIoXk5lT
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) March 30, 2019
Not a word about the people in California who’d like to escape from crime, corruption, and high taxes?
California Governor (and intellectual heavyweight) Gavin Newsom tweeted about President Trump’s threatened border closure, linking it to a trip to El Salvador he announced Thursday – at a healthcare clinic founded by Salvadoran refugees, of course. (No opportunity to pander is ever squandered.) From the L.A. Times, emphasis mine:
At a Los Angeles healthcare clinic founded by Salvadoran refugees, Newsom described the trip as an opportunity to exert California’s leadership, learn about the migration problem and communicate it to the public…
In addition to studying a well-known problem that’s been going on for decades – because of course he’ll be the one to figure out just how it started – Newsom also claimed the trip was an opportunity for California to virtue signal.
“[T]o the extent that the state of California can exercise its moral authority and can lead in [the immigration] conversation anew, I think that’s a healthy thing, and I think that’s part of the role and responsibility of a governor.”
Sigh.
In his next tweet Newsom is sick to his stomach, worrying about the refugees that Mean Orange Man is “mocking.”
People are seeking asylum from incomprehensible conditions — fleeing violence, corruption, persecution — and here is our president mocking them. It makes me sick to my stomach. pic.twitter.com/e26qond8uA
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) March 30, 2019
But just hours later, Newsom tweeted about the “upwards of a million people in CA” who have contaminated drinking water.
It’s a moral crisis that upwards of a million people in CA live in homes with contaminated drinking water. Folks should be able to go home and drink from the faucet or bathe their kids safely — but right now, they can’t. We’re working to fix that. https://t.co/sBOJ4XnUSH
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) March 31, 2019
Unironically.
It seems that everyone in the country is aware of the magnitude of California’s problems, with people living in inhumane conditions and necessary reforms stymied by massive corruption in Sacramento, San Francisco, and Los Angeles (the whole state, really, but those three areas are especially influential), except Gavin Newsom and the rest of the progressives. Of course, they don’t live by the same rules the rest of the state’s residents do.
And those residents immediately called the empty suit out, starting with pointing out what happened to San Francisco during Newsom’s tenure as mayor.
https://twitter.com/JohnDennisWEEI/status/1112686361683939329
It’s quite possible that Newsom hasn’t personally seen the tent cities homeless people have erected in every large town in the state, but he’s definitely aware of the massive lack in funding nonprofits serving that population are facing. But no, let’s go to El Salvador for a serious foreign policy study.
Maybe you should check in with the enormous homeless population in your state first and hear directly from them how you can help. I’m sure they are very happy to hear you’re going to El Salvador. SJW votes are more important to you. So pathetic.
— Jwood (@Jwoodthefirst) March 30, 2019
And yes, you will literally watch people urinate and defecate on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles.
https://twitter.com/ScottLeeper12/status/1112213206473138177
There’s also the question of who’s funding this trip – and if it’s in an airplane or if he’s traveling on a carbon-neutral mode of transport such as, maybe, horseback?
Who's paying for you to go to El Salvador? California taxpayers? Put California first.
People in those countries can apply for asylum at any US embassy.— Truffle Fries (@fakespike1) March 31, 2019
The best takedown, however, was from the Los Angeles Times’ George Skelton, who noted that the trip is being paid for by the State Protocol Foundation, a/k/a “a group of wealthy interests.”
Does anyone in this hemisphere not know the root cause of why caravans of Central American refugees are seeking asylum in the U.S.? Newsom quickly answered his own question in the same prepared sentence in which he raised it: They’re “fleeing poverty and violence in their home countries.”
Great. Also, as Skelton writes, “escaping poverty and bullies…have been root motivators forever.” So, why go to El Salvador? Newsom’s been on the job just a few months, and his first duty is to the people of California, not El Salvador. And, while California voters aren’t President Trump’s biggest cheerleaders, about half of them are in favor of a federal crackdown on illegal immigration. All of that makes this trip a potential political liability.
California’s taxpayers are being nickel-and-dimed with regressive taxes like the gas tax Newsom’s buddies forced through the legislature, they’re sick of increasing homelessness and crime, and, hey, in case he forgot, they’re still recovering from devastating wildfires in 2017 and 2018. Newsom wasn’t forced to endure a hellish evacuation from Malibu, or run for his life as a wall of flames followed him in Paradise, or lose his home or a relative in the Montecito debris flows, so those issues that normal people are facing probably don’t occur to him.
And that’s exactly the problem. Skelton continues:
I suspect voters would prefer that Newsom devote his full attention to running state government, the job they elected him to do. I don’t recall a campaign promise to delve into the rudiments of migration.
He did promise to provide early childhood education, reduce homelessness, develop affordable housing, deliver universal healthcare, fix delta plumbing and try to prevent wildfires.
When Newsom gets all of that done, he can turn to the nagging problems of an unstable tax system, abuse of environmental regulations that stymie homebuilding and subpar K-12 education. And let’s not forget that pokey, costly bullet train project.
Instead of working on all of these things, he’s using his position as a kind of foreign policy “study abroad” internship. He’s been “trying to understand Mexico” and now wants “us” to “put that same kind of intention into Central America.”
No one’s quite sure to whom Newsom’s is referencing when he says “us” or “we” in this context. He could mean Californians in general, but we’re all pretty busy just making sure that we keep the thermostat in just the right place so our power bills don’t skyrocket as the state attempts to force us to only use renewable power sources. We’re trying to recover from weeks of being unable to work as the wildfires raged or having our businesses burned to the ground. We’re busy being vigilant with our personal safety and that of our children and aging parents, since we’re never sure when another lunatic who’s out on probation will lead the police on a high speed chase, putting all of us at risk. We’re installing security cameras and alarms on our homes, because at this point there are few, if any, neighborhoods repeat criminals aren’t hitting with bold in-broad-daylight burglaries.
No, California taxpayers don’t have time to “put intention” into understanding other countries.
Why is Newsom so focused on getting out of town and taking a jaunt to these places that *aren’t* the place he’s been elected to lead? Does he hate being in California that much? Or is that after eight years of doing nothing (literally) as Lieutenant Governor, he’s not used to putting in even a half day’s work?
As Skelton concludes, “this will be the first time a California governor has traveled to a foreign country solely to check on immigration motives. It should be the last.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member