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Gov. Newsom’s mostly boring interview with Hannity

June 17, 2023

I watched Gov. Gavin Newsom’s interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Monday so you didn’t have to.

It wasn’t really worth it — and I only watched because a cruel editor spiked my original column idea and made me watch this instead.

The interview broke no new ground and was what I would have expected: Lots of posturing and many half truths. Kudos to Newsom for going on Fox News, which he often attacks, for the first time since 2010. But here’s a dirty secret: It’s not really that big of a deal.

Primetime hits on any cable news channel are always challenging, and an hour leaves plenty of time to misspeak or go blank, so it requires a lot of preparation.

Newsom was prepared.

But at the same time, it’s often easier to venture into unfriendly terrain because all you’re looking for are sound bites and conflict. Just argue, dodge and object — Newsom excelled at all three.

It would be substantially harder for Newsom to sit down with California media and answer detailed questions from people who intimately know what’s happening in the state and who would bring up prior false or misleading statements in subsequent interviews.

In other words, Newsom going on Hannity is not nearly as admirable or challenging as if Newsom sat down with the Southern California News Group editorial board, for example, or had regular press briefings with the Sacramento press corps.

Of course, Newsom doesn’t have to look too hard for media allies in California.

Here’s the reaction of Newsom’s interview from John Diaz, former editorial page editor of the San Francisco Chronicle: “Indeed, @GavinNewsom was prepared to roll Hannity’s tired talking points with a rapid-fire succession of facts. Gavin at his absolute best. Great for @FoxNews viewers to see this reality check.”

Such hard-hitting coverage!

While Hannity offered his opinion and was deliberately provocative at times, like insisting on using the term “illegal aliens,” his questions were pretty fair, and Fox News viewers, despite whatever Diaz believed happened, were given no reality check.

California has significant challenges that the Democrats in charge, especially Newsom, can’t seem to fix. That’s not a right-wing conspiracy. Throwing money at problems does not seem to be working.

California struggles with literacy, K-12 education, crime, poverty, cost of living, homelessness, housing, water and energy and nothing seems to be getting better.

While Newsom did have answers for questions on some of these topics and others, the answers were insufficient in light of the results and often lacked very important context.

For example: Newsom told Hannity he cut homelessness in San Francisco as mayor by a third. This is a far cry from his promise to end homelessness in the city within a decade, but, as Newsom argued, at least he tried.

Except that’s not really what happened. As PolitiFact wrote in 2018 when Newsom was using a similar talking point (claiming a 40% reduction back then), much of his progress came from bussing thousands of people out of town. And as is painfully obvious, San Francisco’s homelessness problem is as bad as ever.

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Newsom also ignored key context when he applauded President Joe Biden for creating more jobs than the past three Republican presidents combined.

Big if true! Except it’s not, really. Though Biden has enjoyed a solid run of jobs numbers during his term, the vast majority of jobs created were COVID-recovery jobs that came once government stopped keeping businesses shuttered.

On California’s economy, Newsom sidestepped questions about high taxes and cost of living by highlighting things like California’s abundant “venture capital,” which of course means nothing to the millions of Californians living in poverty.

As for his fearlessness, Newsom dodged both easy and hard questions. What grade does he give Biden’s presidency? Wouldn’t say. Nor would he say whether he supported his own committee’s recommendation of giving $1.2 million each to qualifying individuals for reparations.

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Gov. Newsom’s mostly boring interview with Hannity

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