California Gov. Gavin Newsom launched a webpage last month to fight misinformation and disinformation about the tragic wildfires in Los Angeles.
Irony is dead.
The self-appointed Disinformation Czar doesn’t seem to realize he is one of the leading sources of bad information.
The “California Fire Facts” page is hosted on Newsom’s campaign website, already calling into question the effort’s intent and veracity.
The site fact-checks what Newsom deemed the most important bits of misinformation, like whether the fires were started by satanic rituals, whether the Hollywood sign was ablaze, or whether the whole thing was a cover-up for a pedophile ring.
Thank God Newsom set the record straight!
The page solicits donations for a wildfire relief fund, but instead of redirecting to the charity itself, donors are made to contribute through Newsom’s Campaign for Democracy PAC on the Democratic-fundraising platform ActBlue, where he can collect their information.
Not a lie, but not what you’d expect from a page devoted to truth.
Newsom’s legacy of misinformation extends back at least to his time as San Francisco’s mayor at the turn of the century, though he reached the pinnacle of disinformation in November 2020 when he was caught at the French Laundry, a fancy, wine country restaurant, where he dined shoulder to shoulder and unmasked with lobbyists while the rest of the state was being told by Newsom that such actions were an affront to society. (RELATED: Gavin Newsom Plots Memoir to Recast Personal Scandals)
Not long after, Newsom was given a “mostly false” fact check by the Sacramento Bee for claiming he was “living through Zoom school” like the majority of California parents of K-12 students under his own shutdown order. His kids had actually been attending in-person classes for months.
This was actually a year or two after he earned the nickname “Gov. Gaslight” from the Sacramento Bee Editorial Board, a sentiment reiterated months later by the dean of the California press corps, Dan Walters.
Both were opining on Newsom’s first State of the State address where he expressed significant (and well-founded) doubts about the viability of the bullet train project, only to have him insist later that he was misquoted by reporters (who quoted him verbatim). (RELATED: Think Biden’s Railroad Across the Indian Ocean Is a Fantasy? Check Out California’s Vaunted ‘Bullet Train.’)
Subject and scope matter little; Newsom never lets the truth get in the way of a good story. Take his baseball career: At times he had been known to have been a baseball standout at Santa Clara University who had been drafted by the Texas Rangers.
Except he never actually played in a varsity game in college. And he was never drafted by the Rangers, something widely reported until 2008 when a Newsom spokesperson clarified he’d only been scouted. But, of course, that wasn’t entirely true either. He’d been on the team when a scout showed up but he was not specifically scouted.
As Mayor, Newsom promised that he would end homelessness in the city within a decade, saying, “This won’t all happen tomorrow. But it will get done.”
It didn’t get done.
More than a decade later homelessness is as bad as ever in San Francisco, which makes his more recent claim as governor that he would “end family homelessness” statewide in five years even more foolish.
Newsom might argue he would rather be wrong while ambitious than to aim too small. Except he’s wrong on small details as well. In 2016, PolitiFact gave a “pants on fire” rating to Newsom’s “absurd” claim that the “vast majority” of homeless in San Francisco had come from Texas.
As a candidate for governor, Newsom said he’d uphold the will of the voters regarding the death penalty. Once in office, he signed a moratorium on capital punishment.
Reflecting on his first 100 days as governor, Newsom responded to a question about his biggest accomplishment by saying his tenure had been “shaped by … the fact that we’re now in 48 lawsuits with the Trump administration.” Never mind that the vast majority had been filed while his predecessor was in office.
Newsom campaigned on implementing an aggressive and necessary forest management plan to prevent and mitigate wildfires, only for him to grossly overstate the results years later. (RELATED: Trump Was Right About California Wildfires)
On a recent trip to Washington, D.C. Newsom said he wasn’t meeting with Republicans because he’s married to one, though his wife is as much a Republican as Hillary Clinton, who once upon a time campaigned for Barry Goldwater.
Earlier this month Newsom proclaimed his draft budget was efficient and transparent, even though he’s grown the budget and the government to the largest in state history.
It really doesn’t matter what he’s talking about. Whether it’s manufacturing insulin, implementing a single-payer healthcare system, or building 3.5 million new homes, Newsom is far too often found to be not entirely truthful.
Newsom is right that California has a problem with misinformation. It’s him.
Matt Fleming is the Communications Director for the Pacific Research Institute, a California-based think tank that advocates for free-market policy solutions, and is a former California Republican spokesman.
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