by Frank Holmes, reporter
Gavin Newsom is governor of California, but he lives in a different state: denial.
The 55-year-old governor has been quietly trying to convince Democratic donors that he’s a younger, more mentally competent version of Joe Biden ahead of the 2024 presidential election.. but a scandalous recent interview shows he may be as out-of-touch as the man he wants to replace.
In an hour-long interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity last week, Newsom claimed people aren’t moving out of California — but there are moving van receipts that prove he’s lying.
Call it the Newsom U-Haul scandal.
Reports of the Golden State’s population have been “anomalous the last three years,” and the number of people moving out of state has “already slowed down,” Newsom claimed.
Hard facts tell another story: California’s population fell in 2022 for the third year in a row.
The governor’s own administration admits Newsom isn’t being straight with voters: His population loss hasn’t “slowed down” — California’s population exodus has gained momentum like a snowball rolling down Mount Whitney.
Official state data show California losing 138,443 people in 2022. That comes after 117,552 people left California in 2021 — which means the exodus sped up, not “slowed down.” But it is down from 182,000 Californians who picked up stakes at the height of the pandemic and BLM/Antifa riots in 2020. And all that population loss happened despite the fact that 90,000 foreigners moved to California last year.
The number of Silicon Valley visas and caravans can’t compete with the number of U-Hauls and Penskes.
Experts say even those numbers don’t capture reality: A net total of 407,000 people left the Golden State between July 2021 and 2022, according to Hans Johnson of the Public Policy Institute of California.
Things got so bad that, at one point, Newsom’s California literally ran out of U-Hauls.
The facts are so bad in California that even The New York Times couldn’t cover them up. “The Population of California Declined, Again,” reported the Times in May.
“California’s population dropped by 500,000 in two years as exodus continues,” the Los Angeles Times explained.
Newsom tried to spin the numbers, pointing Hannity toward “three independent studies … including a brand new one from UCLA” that show things are just fine.
But the two studies Newsom is talking about are almost two years old—from May and July 2021. No wonder they didn’t report the next two solid years of population losses!
Fox News’ myth of the Great Exodus of CA is simply not true. Here are the facts. pic.twitter.com/LfXTGKOTgR
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) June 17, 2023
Newsom also said other states lost a larger percentage of their population—states like Mississippi, Louisiana, and West Virginia…which were never exactly job magnets.
That’s way different than California, Newsom’s potential 2024 opponents point out. “For decades in this country, people have beaten a path to California…They never lost population until their current governor took office,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told Fox News Channel on Wednesday, “Now, they’re hemorrhaging wealth. Now, they’re hemorrhaging population.”
“People vote with their feet and if someone picks up and moves 2,500 miles across the country from California to Florida, that’s a major statement,” said DeSantis.
At one point, Newsom even seemed to own up to the fact that, on his watch, the Golden State last lost its luster.
“People look at me and ask, ‘What the hell happened to the California of the ‘50s and ‘60s?’” Newsom admitted.
“It’s a good question,” said the conservative Washington Examiner. “What happened to the California that once built millions of acre-feet of water storage, thousands of miles of highways, and millions of new homes? What happened to the California in which the population grew by 53% in the 1950s and by 49% in the 1960s?”
Today, California only builds exit ramps.
But Newsom won’t let that stop him from bringing his record of failure to the White House. He’s spent months shopping himself around as an electable alternative to Joe Biden and his unpopular vice president, Kamala Harris.
“You have a governor of California who’s drooling so hard for the job he’s got to walk around with a bib,” said two-time Republican presidential hopeful Steve Forbes this week on Fox Business.
Another former two-time contender, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, agreed that Newsom has a thirst for higher office and a taste of Biden’s blood.
Newsom “deep down knows that Joe Biden is like a pack of bottle rockets that have been soaked in water all night. They’re never going to ignite,” Huckabee told Hannity Monday. “Joe Biden won’t be the nominee, one way or another. He’ll either be defeated, or somebody will convince him it’s time to step aside.”
Then Gavin Newsom hopes he’ll move from Sacramento to Pennsylvania Avenue.
One thing is for sure: He’s not alone in making plans to leave California.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”