Either Governor Gavin Newsom doesn’t understand the meanings of basic economic terms, or he’s deliberately misleading people. Those are really the only explanations for his comments over the past few weeks, in which he’s repeatedly attacked Donald Trump by calling him, of all things, a socialist. Newsom and his staff have taken to posting sassy all-caps tweets mocking Trump’s speaking style (in lieu of actual political arguments), and they’ve made several posts on the topic: “ALL HAIL CHAIRMAN TRUMP! WITH HIS GLORIOUS 10% PURCHASE OF INTEL, THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF AMERICA ENTERS A BOLD NEW ERA OF GOVERNMENT-RUN BUSINESS.” Or, more straightforwardly: “DONALD TRUMP IS A SOCIALIST! — GCN.” By themselves, these might seem to just be absurd memes, part of Newsom’s overall strategy of needling and annoying Trump however he can. But Newsom repeats this stuff in serious interviews, too. “This guy has completely perverted capitalism,” he said of Trump during a recent podcast, adding that “this guy is the leading nationalist and socialist of our time.”
Conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s gruesome killing last week was both a striking visual of our nation’s intensifying polarization and, by some counts, a catalyst for it to intensify more. Even before a suspect had been identified, there was a knee-jerk reaction among some Republicans to blame the Democratic Party for his death. Some even called […]