It was somewhat remarkable that California Governor Gavin Newsom agreed to sit down for a lengthy interview with Sean Hannity for Fox News last week. The first portion of the interview aired on Monday night and it contained some rather heated exchanges, but it seems to have been handled professionally and I’ll give Newsom credit for being willing to go into the lion’s den rather than sticking to only the friendly, liberal networks. But many of the Governor’s answers to Hannity’s questions seemed to represent either a blatant denial of current events or a complete disconnect from reality. The best example of this so far was when Hannity asked him about California’s spiraling epidemic of homelessness and open-air drug abuse. Again, to his credit, Newsom agreed that the wave of homelessness is “a disgrace.” But he then turned around and stunningly tried to place the blame on… Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Daily Mail)

Democratic governor Gavin Newsom has admitted that California’s homelessness crisis is ‘a disgrace’ – but tried to blame Republicans for creating the situation…

Newsom told Hannity, ‘this state has not made progress in the last two decades as it relates to homelessness because housing costs are too high, our regulatory thickets are too problematic, localism has been too impactful – meaning people locally are pushing back against new housing starts and construction.’

However, he added that he had only been in office for four years and that was not sufficient time to ‘make up for the fact that in 2005 we had a historic number of homeless under a Republican administration.’

Let’s just start with the one part of the answer that Newsom got right. It’s true that the homelessness problem in California has been growing for quite a while now. That’s a fact, and it’s true that there were homeless people in the state when the Governator took office. But he is completely ignoring the fact that the failure to address the problem has been growing worse, not better. It’s accelerated dramatically under Newsom’s tenure, no matter what he wants to blame it on.

Now let’s consider the political reality. When someone who has been in office for five years blames an earlier leader (going back almost two decades) for a serious problem, a glaring, obvious question arises. Even if we were to accept that this was somehow Schwarzenegger’s fault, why haven’t you fixed it by now? Also, I notice he didn’t say anything about Jerry Brown. He was in office for eight years before you were. Why didn’t he fix it?

The answer is equally obvious. Newsom is a liberal Democrat with big political ambitions. As such, he has to find a way to blame Republicans. I’m just shocked he didn’t work the phrase “Mega MAGA” into his answer. Sadly, he has to dig back far into history to find a Republican to blame because it’s been his party that’s been driving California into the ground for more than a dozen years. If Donald Trump had ever owned a home in California, Newsom probably would have blamed him.

The reality of the spiraling homelessness crisis in California is undeniable and it’s being driven by a variety of factors. To be fair, not all of these things are under Newsom’s control. The weather in California makes it far easier for people to live outdoors all through the year as compared to New York City or Chicago. But California politicians also make it far too easy for people to set up encampments on the streets. Their policies discourage law enforcement from doing anything about it and they flush massive amounts of money into the maximum amount of benefits possible for the homeless while doing almost nothing to confront the underlying mental health and substance abuse issues plaguing so many in that community.

The bottom line is that California Democrats have invested very heavily in the homeless. And when you invest heavily into something, you get more of that thing. Any potential solution to the ongoing flood of homeless people overdosing on the streets will need to confront that reality as a first step. And at least thus far, the Democrats have shown no interest in doing that.

Here’s the video of that part of the interview if you missed it.