Newsom’s Refuses To Recognize Legitimacy of Recall

Yesterday, Gavin Newsom was twice asked to acknowledge that the Recall is not a “coup,” as his supporters and the head of his Party claimed. He refused to do so.

At Dodger Stadium, a reporter asked Newsom, “Did you or anyone on your political team advise the California Democratic Party to refer to the Recall as a coup?” He replied, ”Yeah, I’m focused on vaccine distributions.” So the reporter asked again, “Do you disagree with the characterization of it as a coup?” Newsom ignored the question again, even as he freely answered questions on other topics.

The “The California Coup” press conference held earlier this week, which almost certainly wouldn’t have happened without Newsom’s blessing, was given a “Pants on Fire” rating by Capitol Public Radio: “Even in the bounds of political rhetoric,” the fact check concluded, it was “far off base and wildly inaccurate,” since a “coup is a violent overthrow of a government” while a “recall is a legally sanctioned effort” that’s “been part of California’s constitution for more than a century.”

In a scathing editorial, the LA Times said the event “undermined the state’s legitimate direct democracy system.” For a Governor who has denied the people of California any voice in our government all year, his refusal to disavow one of the most irresponsible claims every made in California politics or to recognize the legitimacy of a challenge to his own power is a new leading reason he is unfit to lead.

Those reasons keep piling up, even as Newsom’s operatives are trying to trivialize the Recall by saying it’s just about Newsom “going out to dinner.” Consider just a few news items from this week:

• Lockdowns: Newsom’s worst-in-the-nation lockdowns continue while even Andrew Cuomo nows says “we simply cannot stay closed” and “we must reopen the economy” and while a new Stanford study found “no significant benefits” from lockdowns.

• Schools: yesterday, Newsom released 51 pages of unscientific and impractical school reopening requirements designed to keep schools closed the whole year – which we’ve known was the endgame all along.

• EDD: The backlog of claims, including suspensions, is approaching 2.2 million while the losses from fraud have grown to $9 billion.

• Incompetence: California is 49th in vaccine distribution, which to be fair, is one better than we’ve done in lot of other areas.

No wonder a recent Politico story was headlined, “It’s all fallen apart” for Newsom. The consultant who led the Gray Davis Recall now says there is an “80 to 85 percent chance” the Newsom Recall will qualify for the ballot. The current signature count: 1.1 million.

In the ultimate kiss of death, Newsom did receive one new endorsement: from Gray Davis himself.

*Recent my latest updates on the Recall against Newsom

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