Tucker Carlson: Why Democrats might turn to Gavin Newsom
Fox News host Tucker Carlson examines why President Biden has not announced his 2024 re-election campaign and why California Gov. Gavin Newsom is likely to become the face of the Democratic Party on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'
Imagine being a historian 100 years from now trying to figure out what happened here. There are a lot of questions that are going to puzzle you, but one of the most baffling will be how did Joe Biden get the Democratic nomination in 2020?
2020 was the year you will remember when we learned that White people are bad and systemic racism is responsible for everything that has gone wrong in the world. And yet, 2020 was also the year the Democrats nominated, by their free choice, an elderly White man from a slave state who'd once eulogized a Klan recruiter. So the anti-White party picked the White guy. How did that happen?
Well, it's pretty simple. Democrats care about power, and power derives from winning. When you lose, you don't have power. And Bernie Sanders couldn't win. Sanders terrified the donor class. So Democrats went with Joe Biden, who loves the donor class and is loved by them. And from a fundraising perspective, that turned out to be a wise choice.
By the end of that cycle, Democrats had spent a total of $8.4 billion. That includes $400 million just from Mark Zuckerberg. And that total does not even include the tens of billions in free media coverage as slick and dishonest as any paid ad. But then, unlike paid ads, is not regulated by campaign finance law. So if you add all of that up, the Democratic Party dropped more in that presidential year than the entire annual GDP of most African countries, all to dislodge Donald Trump from the White House. Nothing like that has ever happened.
Can they do it again? That's the question before us, and it's a tougher question this round. Two and a half years ago, many voters could tell themselves that Joe Biden might unite the country.
President-elect Joe Biden and Jill Biden arrive at Biden's inauguration on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021 in Washington. (Win McNamee/Pool Photo via AP)
Some mistook his dementia for moderation, but no one can make that mistake now. With the American economy in decline and the rest of the world in obvious chaos, Biden is going to have to come up with a whole new set of lies in order to keep his job. And that's not an easy thing.
And that may explain why as of mid-April 2023, where we are now, Joe Biden still has not formally announced his re-election campaign. He was asked about it this morning on NBC. Here he is sounding less than all in.
AL ROKER, NBC: Are you saying that you would be taking part in our upcoming election in 2024?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I'll either be rolling the eggs or be the guy who's pushing them out.
ROKER Come on, help a brother out. Make some news for me.
BIDEN: Well, I plan on running now, but we're not prepared to announce it yet.
WHITE HOUSE REAFFIRMS THAT PRESIDENT BIDEN INTENDS TO RUN FOR RE-ELECTION IN 2024
He can barely speak the words. We're not prepared to announce it yet, he says with his eyes closed. Well, why aren't they announcing it? Well, you know why. He's going to be 82 by the next inauguration. And no one really other than his wife thinks that's a good idea, because it's not.
So where does that leave Democrats? Well, if you were a rational person who took them at their word, you would assume the party, the Democratic Party, would replace Joe Biden with someone who embodies their highest values. You imagine a trans-Black woman with a background in corporate H.R. or a Latinx drag queen with purple hair and lots of face piercings. Or maybe even Kamala Harris.
But no. In fact, no chance. That would be principled and therefore, they will never do it. Nominating someone you say you support? No. When Biden leaves or more likely is shoved aside, they're going to nominate another straight White man who loves the big banks, someone even oilier and faker, than Joe Biden. Why would they do that? Because it worked last time.
And we're guessing if we had to bet tonight, it's going to be Gavin Newsom. We can't say that for certain, but we have noticed Gavin Newsom was at the White House not long ago. And Joe Biden wasn't just kind of measuring the curtains. And then over the weekend, we saw this. Gavin Newsom sitting down with the Democratic Party's former spokeswoman, now in residence at MSNBC, Jen Psaki. Psaki didn't conduct really an interview, she's not a journalist. She gave Newsom instead a chance to outline his platform for when he takes complete control. So don't dismiss him. You may be in the habit of dismissing Gavin Newsom. Pay close attention as he gives his pitch on MSNBC.
GAVIN NEWSOM: You know, I just finished 18 events in five days in California. I've sacrificed my heart and soul for my state, and I take a backseat to no one on that. So I get it. But I also don't get what's going on in this country. I don't get why everybody's not doing what we're doing. All the progress [of] the last half century has been rolled back in these states in real-time in just the last few years. I don't think people fully understand the rights regression, individual liberties, on civil rights, on voting rights and the gerrymandering that's happening out here.
Is your brain exploding? If you're a literal person, maybe so. This is the guy who forced every one of his 40 million residents in his state to get an experimental vaccine, whether they wanted to or not, lecturing you about individual rights and civil liberties. "I don't get why everyone isn't doing what we're doing in California," he says. Maybe because it's not working? Because the people who live in your state who can afford to leave have? More people have left California this year than any state in the country. California, the largest net emigration in the United States, they actually ran out of U-Hauls it was that bad.
So you have a mixture of billionaires and desperately poor people who are dependent upon the state. Kind of like Latin America. That's exactly the economic structure increasingly of the state of California. It's not a place of promise. And you know that because middle-class people with families aren't moving there. That's how, you know.
Is your state doing the right thing? Well, people who haven't made it but would like to, would be moving there, not fleeing from tyranny in other countries or desperate poverty in Central America, but from other parts of America. Are they moving there? No, they're not. Where are they going? Well, actually, they're going to Florida. That's not a political point. It's just true and it's measurable.
So you'd think if you were a normal person and you were running California, you'd think, what are they doing in Florida that we should be doing? No, not Gavin Newsom. And this is the key to his appeal to Democratic leaders like Joe Biden. He will literally say anything and then he'll take it to 11 and lecture the person who is doing a better job than he is on how he's a bad person. Watch Newsom tell the governor of Florida how to run a state.
JEN PSAKI ON MSNBC: There was a pretty startling split screen. You had a thousand kids in Nashville out there protesting the lack of action on gun reform measures while you had Governor DeSantis signing a bill on permitless carry behind closed doors. What did you make of that?
NEWSOM: Yeah, scared to death.
PSAKI: Who is he scared of?
NEWSOM: Scared of the people. Scared of the public.
PSAKI: The people in Florida?
NEWSOM: Yeah, that overwhelmingly oppose that position. I think the majority of NRA members, you know, probably oppose that position.
CALIFORNIA GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM ENDORSES EVEN STRICTER GUN CONTROL AFTER STRING OF MASS SHOOTINGS
This is what happens with everything about you, from your physical features to your very soul has been altered by cosmetic surgery. Just like Joe Biden, but younger. You'll say literally anything. Words have no connection to reality. There's no expectation you're describing something real. You're merely using words as a tool to gain power. That's terrifying. It's dishonest to its core.
So you just heard Gavin Newsom say that only leaders who are, "scared of the people" let the people carry firearms. They're so scared of the people they let them defend themselves. By contrast, when you're a completely legitimate leader presiding over a system that's not rigged, you start confiscating guns. You live in a state where only the governor's bodyguards can be armed. It's like?
What you're seeing here is not just the triumph of packaging over reality, but the triumph of dishonesty over truth. That's so dishonest that he's not even trying to convince you. He's trying to reshape reality itself.
By the way, why wouldn't he? If men can become women, then why wouldn't everything Gavin Newsom says be true just because he said it? So what's the effect on the actual state? Our largest state, the prettiest state, well it was for decades the economic engine of the United States. California. What has been the effect of Gavin Newsom's leadership on that state?
Well, this has been well chronicled. Newsom has been the governor of California, beat a recall recently, since 2019, for four years. Before that, he ran San Francisco, where he's from. So how's San Francisco doing? Under good leadership, San Francisco would be thriving. But under Gavin Newsom's leadership, well, here's what's happening in San Francisco.
VIDEO FROM KTVU: Friends identified the victim as Don Carmen Yanni, a former San Francisco fire commissioner. He suffered a fractured skull, broken jaw and lots of lacerations to his face and head. Carmen Yanni showed up to his mother's place after they refused to move. Soon they picked up and put down near the corner laundry mat. Carmen Yanni confronted them. And that, they say, is what provoked the brutal beating, the crime, angering and traumatizing those who heard or saw it all unfold.
SAN FRANCISCO RESIDENT: So, I moved here because I love the city, and it's becoming more and more disturbing to live here.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, UNITED STATES - APRIL 05: The full Pink Moon rises over San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge as seen from Sausalito in San Francisco, California, United States on April 05, 2023. ((Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images))
Yeah, they just closed today, actually, a Whole Foods in downtown San Francisco. Not a mom-and-pop place. A Whole Foods. A well-backed, in fact, owned by Amazon, company. Biggest company in the world owns the grocery store and they still had to close it. A grocery store that caters to rich people and one of the richest cities in the world. And they had to close it because why? Because the people who worked there were too afraid for their own physical safety to show up for work.
So that's what's happening in San Francisco. By the way, last week, Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App, was murdered, stabbed to death on the street in what they tell us is one of the nicest parts of San Francisco. And then apparently, according to surveillance video, the guy who murdered him randomly, just murdered him on principle, I guess, walked down the street completely at ease, pulling a rolling bag behind him because he has nothing to fear because there are no cops.
This is a state in which crime has been legalized and the only crimes are now thought crimes. If you disagree with the people in charge, then you're in serious trouble. But if you hurt others or steal, you're fine. You're part of a protected class. That's the definition of tyranny. And there are still some people in California who understand that. Here's one sheriff in Riverside County:
SHERIFF CHAD BIANCO: In the last 10 years, criminals have become increasingly more violent and brazen. What we are seeing in response to these very lax laws on crime, the push to decriminalize everything, the push to lessen the penalty for something or even take away the penalty for crime is basically emboldening criminals to do more. It's really horrifying for law enforcement and it is horrifying for the public that has to deal with it.
So here's our guess. We don't know the guy, but we would bet money that the second that man is vested in this pension, in other words, the second he can leave, he'll be in Idaho, or Arizona or anywhere other than that state, because you can't live in a state like that unless you're rich. Of course.
So if you cared about the state of California, you would do something about this. But Gavin Newsom has completely ignored the condition of his state, physically – it's now filthy – and the lives of the people who live there. Instead, he's doing what they all do, which is doubling down on identity politics, pandering to people on the basis of their skin color or their sexual orientation or whatever. And because ultimately he is a stiff robotic lizard man, he's doing it in the most awkward possible way. Here he is, April 5th at the New College of Florida, because he is running for president, trying his best to seem interested as he claps along to an ethnic song and dance.
NEWSOM TRAVELS TO BANNED RED STATES WITH NEW PAC AS PRESIDENTIAL RUMORS SWIRL
VIDEO OF NEWSOM AWKWARDLY CLAPPING
So you want to know if he's running for president? Well, he flew to Florida to degrade himself on camera. And self-effacement is the number one requirement of politics. You have to be willing to leave your dignity at the door. And for Gavin Newsom, that's easy.
So if your first reaction to that is to recoil in revulsion and turn off your television set, then you're the threat to democracy. Normal people are the threat to democracy. Newsom's campaign ad, and this is the first of his presidential campaign ads we predict, makes that perfectly clear. Watch.
NEWSOM POLITICAL AD: We can't solve a problem without first identifying it. The problem in our country right now? Authoritarian leaders who are so hell-bent on gaining power and keeping it by whatever means necessary that they're directly attacking our freedoms in state after state. That's why I'm launching the Campaign for Democracy. We're going on the road to take the fight to states where freedom is most under attack, where Republican leaders ban books, criminalize doctors, fire teachers, intimidate librarians, kidnap migrants, target trans kids, stoke racism, condone antisemitism, force the victims of rape and incest to carry their attackers baby, or they ignore the will of the people and make it harder to vote and easier to buy assault weapons. We'll help lead the fight to make sure we elect leaders in 2024 who believe in democracy.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks in Sacramento, Calif., Jan. 10, 2023. (AP Photo/José Luis Villegas, File)
Oh, the huevos on that man. You've got to give him credit. Everything in that ad is not only untrue, it is the mirror image of the truth. It is the exact opposite of the truth and is therefore not just misleading. It is evil.
This is not a question of "we disagree on something." This is a fact of someone flipping around the truth and inverting it. If you're opposed to men in dresses twerking in front of kids, you're intimidating librarians. If you pause before you say castrate children, you're targeting trans kids. And of course, if you're not with his program, you don't believe in democracy. You're promoting authoritarianism.
This is the man who's governor of a state in which there really is no democracy, in which all the candidates and the election outcomes are chosen by the unions, which are in bed with the Democratic Party, is a one-party state. And the man who presides over a one-party state is lecturing you about democracy? Right.
This is the guy who shut down the state of California and all of its schools for all the poor people while he sent his children to in-person private schools and went to dinner at the most expensive restaurant in the United States. Meanwhile, anyone who didn't get his creepy shot, he compared to a criminal. To a criminal! To a drunk driver. Watch.
NEWSOM IN JULY 2021: With all due respect, you don't have a choice to go out and drink and drive and put everybody else's lives at risk. That's the equivalent of this moment with the deadliness and efficiency of the Delta virus.
So that turned out to be completely untrue, completely provably untrue as a matter of science. And again, the literal among us are driven crazy by watching a videotape like that.
But Gavin Newsom is not driven crazy. It doesn't bother him at all. He's never apologized. He's never revised what he said before. He just kept going. This is a man who will say anything. And people who will say anything tend to be willing to do anything. And like Joe Biden, he has consistently run as a moderate and falsely. Back in 2008, as the] mayor of San Francisco, he promised to eliminate homelessness within the city within ten years. That, of course, didn't work out. He's never apologized for that. In fact, homelessness has grown by double digits under his stewardship of the state.
But if you want to understand who Gavin Newsom really is, if you want to appreciate not just the dishonesty but the deep malice at the core of him, the desire to hurt other people and the indifference to human suffering that has been the hallmark of his governorship, watch this clip from 2020 on sobriety.
NEWSOM: Clean and sober is one of the biggest d*** mistakes this country's ever made. I know it's a hold-your-hand, idealistic point of view that somehow, magically, I mean, God bless some of you. If you're like me, I've been known to have a glass of wine at night watching some of the nightly news. We all need to self-medicate periodically.
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"We all need to self-medicate periodically." Well, now we have a country in which virtually everyone is self-medicating all the time, very often with the help of doctors. And nowhere is it worse than the state of California. If you cared about the people who lived in the state of California, you would notice this. Nearly 30,000 Californians die every single year from drugs and alcohol. That's the most of any state. To put it in perspective, that is close to ten times as many people who die every year from gunfire. And of course, addiction is the central driver of homelessness which has not only made the state ugly and dangerous and unlivable, but it's also destroyed the lives of the people who are living on the streets. What about them?
Gavin Newsom doesn't care. "Clean and sober is one of the biggest d*** mistakes this country ever made." Really? If you're willing to say that, if you care so little about the people who live in your state, that you will mock their sobriety, then you're definitely running for president.
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