00:00Governor Gavin Newsom has spent a week in New York at the opening of the General Assembly of the United
00:06Nations.
00:07He has spent several days there addressing various UN meetings, primarily focused on climate.
00:14Newsom, of course, is not a head of state, so he doesn't get to address the General Assembly,
00:18but he certainly wants to create the impression that one day he could be a head of state, specifically President
00:23of the United States.
00:24Newsom didn't really get to say much in public.
00:26He gave a five-minute speech at one session, which he devoted mostly to bashing President Donald Trump.
00:32Not for the first time, Newsom called Trump an invasive species,
00:37and also sided with the rest of the world against a president that Newsom called a danger to the country.
00:44He even accused Trump of calling for genocide in his comments to the General Assembly about Iran.
00:49In fact, Trump specifically threatened the regime in the Islamic Republic and not the entire country of Iran, but never
00:55mind that.
00:56One of the more interesting things Newsom claimed is that Elon Musk became wealthy in California because of regulations, as
01:04Newsom called it.
01:05Newsom said that regulations had created the certainty that allowed Elon Musk to invest in Tesla and become successful.
01:11But he conflated regulations and the rule of law.
01:15And in fact, regulations sometimes disrupt the rule of law because the more silly rules you have, the more people
01:21start going outside the law to comply with them.
01:24California knows that all too well.
01:26There wasn't much sense in what Newsom has said, and he's following a pattern that was established by his predecessor,
01:32Jerry Brown, of creating a profile on the global stage.
01:36Now, Brown didn't run for president after doing that, even though he had run previously, but he wanted to project
01:41an image of California as caring about climate, caring about the environment and, in a sense, being an alternate America
01:49to the one that was presented by Trump in the Oval Office.
01:52Whether it helps Newsom's presidential campaign remains to be seen.
01:56There are certainly problems at home in California, and many California voters have already concluded that Newsom has checked out.
02:03He's not really interested in governing anymore.
02:05And it might not matter to a national primary electorate, but if Newsom is going to run and be a
02:13serious candidate, at some point he's going to have to explain his record.
02:15And he's racking up an awful number of absentee days.
