Trump made those comments about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country” during a campaign rally in Iowa last year, later saying he did not know that Adolf Hitler had once said something similar. Still, the comments have become a key talking point for the left as they paint Trump’s candidacy as a warning for a dark future.
The political tone of Newsom’s speech was not surprising given his role as one of the Biden campaign’s top surrogates, which has made him a target of Republicans who have repeatedly held up California as an example of Democrats’ mismanagement. They have pointed to the state’s $46.8 billion budget deficit, high tax rates, large homeless population and the proliferation of property crimes in its largest cities — acts which have been captured in viral social media clips.
Much of Newsom’s speech was devoted to pushing back against that narrative, referring to “delusional California bashers” whose “success depends on our failure.” He noted California’s violent crime rate is about half of what it was at its peak in 1992. He said property crime in San Francisco has fallen, as has the overall crime rate across the bay in Oakland — where Newsom recently deployed 120 California Highway Patrol officers.
“That’s because, in California, we take public safety seriously — a problem to solve, not just to flog on cable news,” he said.
On homelessness, Newsom pointed to the more active role the state has taken under his administration, including spending billions of dollars to create programs that provided 15,300 units of housing and provided shelter for more than 71,000 people. However, a state audit released earlier this year chided his administration for not tracking how effective the state’s homelessness spending — more than $24 billion over five years — has been.
Newsom defended his decision to sign a law raising the minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 an hour, a raise businesses have blamed for increasing customer costs. He also boasted about California’s economy, which, were it an independent country, would rank as the fifth largest in the world—saying California has added 63,000 new millionaires since 2019.
“Here is a simple question for Republicans: If California is a failed state, why are four of the seven most valuable companies in the world based here?” he said, referring to Apple, Nvidia, and the parent companies of Google and Facebook. “The best minds in the world call California home because they’re liberated from the constraints of conformity and tradition. This is true freedom — to invent and make the world a better place.”