Gavin Newsom is China’s newest useful idiot
Zachary Faria
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Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) inability to go more than a few weeks without fluffing his ego has real costs. That includes Newsom playing directly into the hands of Chinese propaganda.
Newsom’s visit to China is quite literally an ego trip, one that props up his backup presidential campaign and puts himself front and center as an environmental hero as he blathers about climate change to a Chinese Communist Party that couldn’t care less about the environment. The visit helps China keep up its facade of big climate promises that never include any real action, which Democratic politicians keep falling for no matter how many times the CCP pulls the mat out from under them.
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But Newsom also made sure to keep completely quiet about China’s human rights abuses on his trip as well. “I can’t be everything to everybody at every moment of every minute of every day,” Newsom said. Of course, how dare anyone ask a man who postures as the moral conscience of the U.S. to shoulder the burden of opposing China’s genocide of the Uyghurs or its plans for militaristic expansion when he is really just there to drive around an electric car?
So, Newsom visited Hong Kong and ignored that China forcibly snuffed out its autonomy, despite even Democrats such as Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) urging him to speak out about it. He declared that Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, who has overseen a genocide in Xinjiang, isn’t so bad after all. And he was praised by the CCP state-run Global Times for California’s “friendly policy toward China.”
Nothing quite says that you are a true moral leader like heaping praise on a dictator and receiving praise for being a “friend” to the world’s worst human rights abuser.
Again, in all of this, Newsom made no difference in his stated goal of working with China against climate change. China simply does not care about the environment. But Newsom’s real goal was to continue to raise his profile for his presidential run in 2028 (or 2024). He accomplished that, at the cost of handing the Chinese Communist Party several propaganda wins. The trip was a win for both Newsom and Xi, and a loss for human rights and basic human compassion.