Has there ever been a governor more derelict in duty than Gavin Newsom? Or as arrogantly tiresome? Or with so much of that arrogance completely unjustified?
Frankly, Newsom might want to fully transition into podcasting at this point. He clearly doesn’t to govern anything, especially his own tongue. He stood around while thousands of Angelenos lost their homes in January, thanks to the maliciously incompetent handling of wildfires by Karen Bass and her cronies. Newsom hasn’t lifted a finger to expedite the approval processes for rebuilding in those areas either.
And now, Newsom wants everyone to be as derelict in duty. Newsom refuses to cooperate with immigration enforcement, and refuses to protect federal enforcement officers when they conduct legitimate enforcement operations. He also refused to send more resources to control rioters who attacked these federal agents and the federal building downtown, and professed shock, shock! when Donald Trump called up the National Guard and the Marines to protect both.
So what does Newsom want to do? These days, he prefers to spend his time on podcasts and doom-scrolling on X/Twitter. That brings us to last night, where Newsom pursued his alternate career as social media troll obsessed with Trump. Trump and VP J.D. Vance attended a performance of Les Mis last night, and Greasy Gavin apparently envied the attention drawn to their attendance:
Someone explain the plot to him. pic.twitter.com/IZps0wHTPd
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) June 12, 2025
Newsom must have thought that was a sick burn, and it might have been … if it came from someone who didn’t spend every single day as a sneering elitist hypocrite. I offered a quick riposte:
You see, Jean Valjean was starving because the government shut down all commerce for the peasants, and so he stole a croissant from the French Laundry where Gov. Javert was dining …. https://t.co/UjajkMGtpE
— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) June 12, 2025
Les Mis tells the story of the French Revolution through the saga of a bread thief and an obsessed policeman, but the backdrop of the uprising against the elites is the true message. So, which of these are the elites — the man who just got elected and is actually doing what he promised, or the governor whose entire career has focused on pandering to the elites while doing nothing but podcast and troll through what’s left of his second term?
The French Laundry episode was hardly the only example of Newsom’s hypocritical carve-outs for himself and his cronies, although that was bad enough. In November 2020, Newsom still had severe pandemic restrictions on multi-household gatherings and on commerce for the proles, but dammit, Newsom needed to celebrate Trump’s 2020 loss and the birthday of … a Sacramento lobbyist. No, I am not kidding:
The dinner the night of Nov. 6 at the famed French Laundry in Yountville in Napa County brought together at least 12 people to celebrate the 50th birthday of Jason Kinney, a longtime friend and political adviser to Newsom who is also a partner at the lobbying firm Axiom Advisors. In addition to the governor, his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, was in attendance.
State guidelines limit gatherings, defined as “social situations that bring together people from different households at the same time in a single space or place,” to no more than three households. Representatives for Kinney and Newsom declined to specify how many households the diners represented, but did not dispute that it was more than three.
Newsom and his office lied about the table being outdoors, too:
EXCLUSIVE: Full story re: photos of Gavin Newsom at Napa dinner party we obtained. Responses from Newsom’s team as well as Jason Kinney’s team included. His team also referred us to a Town & Country magazine photo describing the seating as outdoors. https://t.co/LmQ2yIggGf @FOXLA
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) November 18, 2020
And guess who else was coming to dinner and to violate the pandemic protocols? More lobbyists, and the irony blows the needle off the irony meter:
Not only do they call into question Governor Newsom’s explanation that the dinner was outside they also reveal that two high-level members of the California Medical Association were there at the dinner with the governor and that’s sparking outrage. …
A closer look reveals that Janus Norman a top lobbyist for the California Medical Association who is sitting right next to Governor Newsom.
On Newsom’s other side is the CEO of the California Medical Association Dustin Corcoran.
Neither of them, as a matter of fact, no one at the table was wearing a mask or social-distancing despite the CMA funding an ad campaign this year urging people to wear masks.
But that’s not the end of Governor Javert’s elitist sneering. Just a few days after this, Newsom issued a statewide curfew in response to an emerging COVID variant that required all Californians to remain in their homes between 10 PM and 5 AM. Well … almost all Californians:
The order issued by Newsom on Thursday is described as a “limited stay-at-home order”. It establishes a curfew between the hours of 10 PM and 5 AM. All non-essential work, movement, and gatherings must stop during those hours, except for the exempted categories of those deemed essential in the state’s purple tier, essentially every county in Southern California and 94% of the state’s population. The entertainment industry is located in Southern California and the governor is allowing a nice little carve-out for Hollywood. Though entertainment workers were not exempted in Newsom’s original stay-at-home orders last March, the industry is listed in the latest order under the category of essential workers. The original order still applies with some revisions, like this one.
So, all those grave shift workers in other industries are out of luck and out of work for the next month – the curfew is issued for one month – while entertainment workers continue to work.
Rules for thee but not for we!
However, the French Laundry episode wasn’t the last personal episode of elitist hypocrisy for Newsom. The next year, Newsom ordered that summer camps require children to mask up at all times, despite evidence for more than a year that (a) masks didn’t do anything, and (b) children were not at risk for COVID complications. So guess where Newsom sent his own children:
Two of California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s children briefly attended a summer camp that was in defiance of the state’s COVID-19 guidance that summer camps require children ages 2-11 to wear masks at all times.
The strange saga started Monday when an anti-Newsom school reopening group called attention to photos on social media that showed one of Newsom’s sons maskless at a basketball camp with other maskless campers. The state’s mask rules for children have been controversial.
“The real problem is Newsom’s own family having mask choice, while he forces a different policy on every other kid in California,” the account wrote in a Twitter thread that was widely shared.
And the camp had explicitly notified the Newsoms and other parents of this policy:
The story did not end there. A copy of the camp’s mask policy that was emailed to parents began to circulate on social media, and clearly stated that, “Masks will not be enforced. Please know that your child is more than welcome to wear a mask during camp.”
Three months later, Newsom again exempted his own child from mandates imposed on the children of others. I wrote about it at the time:
Ten days ago, Gavin Newsom imposed a vaccination mandate on all students above the age of 12, including both public- and private-school enrollees. As it turns out, the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday in a buried lede that Newsom has made one exception — his own daughter.
To be fair, Newsom’s order allowed for personal-belief exemptions — but …
The governor has said the state’s process offers an “accommodating” personal belief exemption and will provide adequate time to hesitant parents to talk to their doctors and school nurses. He said his own daughter, who recently turned 12 years old and is eligible for the vaccine, has not yet received it because she has “a series of other shots” to get first.
This does have shades of French Laundry-esque double standards, even with the caveat of “personal belief” exemptions. In the first place, it’s clear that Newsom’s “personal belief” is that he can order everyone else to vaccinate their children, meaning he has no beef with the shot or any liberty issues. He’s not even relying on the exemption to excuse his daughter from the mandate, only claiming that they haven’t gotten around to it yet because of some weird backlog on other injections. If that’s good enough for Newsom, why wouldn’t that be good enough for other parents?
And again, although this tangential to the main point, by this time (October 2021) we had plenty of data to show that children were neither vectors of nor at risk for COVID-19. Vaccination mandates were entirely unjustified, and yet Newsom imposed the mandate on every child except his own.
Newsom hasn’t spent his time manning the barricades in the Les Mis sense. He’s not even really Javert, a tragic figure trapped by his obsession with the law. Newsom is Louis XVI, a clueless and incompetent monarch defending the privileges of the elite and wondering why starving mobs don’t appreciate his talents. And that’s on a good day; on a bad day, he’s more akin to the dilettante Valmont portrayed by John Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons. (I also loved Colin Firth’s very different portrayal in the more romantically inclined version Valmont, by Milos Forman. Both are excellent.)
Perhaps someone can explain the plot of the French Revolution 1823 uprising to Newsom, too. It didn’t turn out well for the elites, nor for the Robespierres who fancied themselves the judges of the elites.
Update: VIP member Chris of Rights reminds me that Les Miserables was set in the 1823 popular uprising, not the French Revolution. Same players, essentially, and at least similar outcomes for the peasantry, but definitely not the exact same setting. I’ve fixed it above. It’s been a while since I read the book and saw the movie, which if I recall correctly, doesn’t make the distinction too clear.
