The emperor has no clothes — and no empathy.
It’s likely, though, he still does have a standing reservation at the French Laundry.
Of course, it’s Gavin Newsom, of whom I write.
The smug and ambitious progressive California Governor whose political aspirations went up in flames as Los Angeles continues to burn to the ground, leaving a shocking number of residents’ lives in tatters.
And it’s Newsom, who has become the arsonist, setting the fire to his political fortunes with a series of unforced errors — putting a cap on years of mismanagement and abandoning crucial infrastructure in favor of useless far left policies that made social justice and climate warriors feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Since the inferno broke out, Newsom has shown that he’s ill prepared and shameless: shifting blame to others and trying to ditch one of his devastated constituents.
It’s like he and the epically feckless Karen “I’d rather be in Ghana” Bass had made a political suicide pact for 2025.
As Pacific Palisades was ablaze, Anderson Cooper asked Newsom about the dry hydrant situation there. Instead of owning any failure, he passed the buck.
“Look, the local folks are trying to figure that out,” he told Cooper.
Actually, Gov., you should have ensured the local folks had it sorted as risks were well known.
This all stops with the top, even if it was a “local” issue. This apocalyptic inferno wasn’t some freak accident in a backwater that no one could find on the map. This was Los Angeles, home to millions, and a city that remains under constant threat of wildfires.
Then he cowardly tried to use a fake phone connection to brush off an anguished mother sifting through the rubble of her community.
“Governor! Governor! I live here, Governor! That was my daughter’s school!” said Pacific Palisades resident Rachel Dervish, running after Newsom as he tried to hightail it back into his SUV.
“I’m literally talking to the president right now to specifically answer the question, of what we can do for you and your daughter,” he said with all the blessed chutzpah of Jan Brady speaking on the phone with George Glass.
When Dervish asked to hear the call, “because I don’t believe it,” Newsom, who was clearly not on a line with anyone, then switched tact. He said he was trying to get ol’ Joe on the horn but he had no service. He explained that he had tried five times and was walking around looking for a signal.
She continued to press him on the lack of water in the hydrants.
“Why was there no water in the hydrants, Governor? Is it going to be different next time?” she asked.
“It has to be, it has to be, of course,” he said when she told him he was doing nothing.
She was desperate and grief stricken. She was also – like so many in her neighborhood – angry.
There were red flag warnings and yet, Bass was in Africa and Newsom was out to lunch. Why wasn’t he micromanaging their preparedness and their water supply.
Natural disasters are a fact of life in the Golden State and it’s impossible to guess mother nature – but there are also ways to prepare for battle and mitigate the damage from her wrath.
Take Ron DeSantis, who every year is faced with a destructive hurricane season. He is an extremely competent crisis manager who prepares for the worst, marshals all resources and communicates extremely effectively with Floridians.
He seems to revel in the details, in the foresight and in the aftermath, helping residents return to normalcy as soon as possible.
The act of governing is not sexy. Just look at the Florida Governor’s terribly unflattering white rain boots. Karl Lagerfeld he is not.
Newsom, on the other hand, is slick and handsome. But he is empty and incompetent. He is skilled in delivering platitudes about diversity and inclusion, hyper-focusing on “marginalized communities,” including the endangered Delta smelt, according to Trump.
And for all his talk about tolerance, he was cold and dismissive to Dervish. Sometimes being a leader means listening and being a soft place to land. Expressing both confidence and humanity.
It’s what George W. Bush understood when he stood on the pile at Ground Zero and said, “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you.”
Newsom, who was very high in the dem’s presidential depth chart, spectacularly failed this moment on both a political and a human level.
Voters will not forget.
