California Governor Gavin Newsom just can’t seem to stop obsessing over his imagined rival Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who’s had a far more successful run than Newsom in almost every category imaginable. DeSantis was a national leader in getting kids back to school during COVID, while many of California’s children wasted away at home for a year and a half. Californians are voting with their feet, ditching the Golden State in droves, while Florida’s population is exploding. California is plagued by homelessness and crime, while crime is down in the Sunshine State.
But the envious Governor Hair Gel, as he is known around here, keeps making unprovoked attacks against DeSantis, including running laughable ads in Florida in June of 2022 that only seem to highlight how badly his state is performing. On Sunday, he took to the airwaves with former Biden Press Secretary Jen “Circle Back” Psaki on MSNBC.
When Psaki brought up DeSantis, Newsom jumped in: “Not a fan,” he said. Talking about DeSantis’ criticism of the weaponization of the justice system after Trump’s questionable indictment, Newsom opined:
He just looked weak, weakness masquerading as strength.
Newsom went on to predict that if DeSantis runs for president in 2024, he’ll get soundly defeated by front-runner Donald Trump in the GOP primaries:
He is going to get by rolled by Trump. Trump’s just gonna roll him—thumped. Honestly, if I were offering him political advice I would tell him to pack up and wait a few years. And actually do some of the hard work, which actually includes governing, not just identity and cultural war.
Newsom is entitled to his opinions—and his predictions—but he really enters the Twilight Zone when he attempts to tell DeSantis how to do his job better. He listed some areas where DeSantis could improve his governing, including focusing on the high cost of housing, which is rich, because California has the third-highest home prices in the nation according to one report. Florida doesn’t even crack the top 10.
Then he drops the real doozy:
Come back as a more seasoned and capable leader with a little humility. Which, by the way, he could use a little of.
Newsom is one of the most pompous, arrogant politicians in recent memory, constantly talking down to people and telling residents how wonderful he is while he drives the formerly Golden State into the ground. His talking about humility is as preposterous as if Stormy Daniels started lecturing you about modesty.
Newsom’s obsession with DeSantis borders on the bizarre; I can’t think of a similar situation where a governor constantly attacked another state executive on the other side of the country without provocation. It seems personal, too; Newsom kept repeating how DeSantis is “weak” over and over again as if questioning his manhood. I can see only two explanations for this weird behavior. One, he’s green with envy and can’t stand that DeSantis has had such success while he’s suffered indescribable failure, or two, he’s planning a presidential run and sees Ron as his strongest potential foe—whether in 2024 or 2028.
In any case, Newsom is the one who looks weak here by hyper-focusing on someone who’s busy governing—not pondering what another governor is up to every second of the day.