OPINION:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom tried out for the American presidency in China last month, cozying up to Communist leader Xi Jinping and declaring he was there to save the planet.
In reality, Mr. Newsom’s brain is at President Biden’s bedside, taking his pulse, giving him a cognitive test, and wondering if Jill Biden or Barack Obama is the real president.
China may seem like a weird stop for Mr. Newsom to burnish a commander-in-chief image. China harasses our military. China drugs us, poisons us, steals from us and lies about us. China is trying to kill just enough of us to undermine America but not enough to attract a meaningful U.S. response.
But for Democrats like Mr. Newsom, it is a must on a checklist to dance with Beijing. Its consumers ensure that rich left-wing Democratic donors grow richer to fund party candidates and social activists. You know, like open borders, “defund the police” and imprison former President Donald Trump for life.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen went to China and repeatedly bowed to Vice Premier He Lifeng. In Beijing, Secretary of State Antony Blinken sat at a crowded conference table, appearing to be just another Politburo member paying homage to Mr. Xi at the head of the table.
China flooded the Biden family with cash from a Communist Party-linked energy tycoon. As vice president, Mr. Biden took son Hunter with him in 2013 to China, where both huddled with Chinese banker Jonathan Li. Days later, Hunter became a Li partner in a private equity firm.
A dazzled Mr. Newsom arrived in the police state looking like he had just walked into Disneyland. He toured a Tesla plant. Looked at EV vehicles. Rode a toboggan like a kid. Visited the Great Wall for a photo shoot. Shot hoops. Everything but pickleball.
The visit’s purpose was to talk up climate change with the world’s biggest polluter. The climate is the mother’s milk of today’s left, with its authoritarian edicts and billions of dollars in private grants, Biden bucks and, most importantly, political donations.
Mr. Newsom’s public relations team on Oct. 30 issued a gushy trip report saying that together, China and the governor will save the planet.
“The fate of the world relies on climate cooperation with China,” Mr. Newsom’s team said.
That is how ridiculous the Newsom presidency will be.
In reality, China is maintaining a furious pace for building new smoky coal-fired plants.
“Coal power continues to expand in China, despite the government’s pledges,” the Finland-based Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air says.
In other words, China’s pledges are worthless, just like the ones it signed with Mr. Newsom.
In contrast, the United States is not building any new coal plants, and Mr. Biden wants to ban kitchen appliances.
Here are some of China’s devious enterprises not addressed in any serious way by Mr. Newsom, a wine entrepreneur with a net worth of $42 million).
China poisoned the world with a bat virus that escaped from the county’s sloppy Wuhan lab in 2019. Rather than alert the world, Beijing covered up. Arrested people who wanted to blow the whistle. Lied about its origin. Millions died because communists are evil.
China supplies the Mexican drug cartels with the ingredients to make huge amounts of fentanyl. China knows the opioid will be smuggled inside the southern border to make it more available to kill more people. To boot, China makes “tranq,” slang for xylazine, an animal tranquilizer available online to dealers to kill even more Americans.
According to a recent Drug Enforcement Administration report, “The Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel in Mexico, using chemicals largely sourced from China, are primarily responsible for the vast majority of the fentanyl that is being trafficked in communities across the United States.”
Another DEA report said, “A kilogram of xylazine powder can be purchased online from Chinese suppliers with common prices ranging from $6-$20 U.S. dollars per kilogram.”
While Mr. Newsom toured China in late October, the Treasury Department issued a report outlining the Chinese network that ships fentanyl here. It is headed not by some illicit organized crime family but by the head of a pharmaceutical firm. In other words, with the Chinese Communist Party’s knowledge and blessings.
Chinese military units constantly illegally hack America to steal personal data and proprietary commercial properties. Our inventions.
China operates a social media platform called TikTok that is programmed to target American children to pollute their minds and get them to do self-destructive pranks (“slap your teacher”). TikTok is popular with adults and businesses. That’s the idea. Wrap the destruction of our young in user-friendly fun. (China does not allow its youth to see TikTok craziness.)
Why does a poll show a majority of American youth support Hamas brutalizing Jews? Rep. Mike Gallagher, Wisconsin Republican and chair of the House Select Committee on Chinese Communist Party, says the reason is TikTok. It feeds science projects to Chinese children and anti-West, anti-Jewish propaganda to American children.
“Here in America, the application’s algorithm is exquisitely tuned to prioritize polarizing outrage and addictive, brain-numbing nonsense (at best) and dangerous propaganda (at worst),” Mr. Gallagher wrote in The Free Press.
In a Fox 11 Los Angeles interview this past June, Mr. Newsom, the former mayor of scarred and disheveled San Francisco, was asked about this once charming city. It’s now pockmarked with shuttered stores due to rampant theft and violence. Closed: Nordstroms, Office Depot, Whole Foods, AT&T, Banana Republic, CVS, seven Starbuckses — so many that the San Francisco Chronicle recently published a map tracking the tragedy.
Mr. Newsom’s answers did not mention crime.
“They’re struggling with the macroeconomic shifts, particularly as it relates to telework, as it relates to what’s the future of a downtown,” he said. “By the way, I’ve seen that in San Francisco for decades.”
“Macroeconomics.”
Mr. Newsom lived a fantasy in China, and he lives one here at home, too. He is perfectly suited to be the next Joe Biden.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.