Quarantine Chronicles Day 30: Gov. Newsom’s Tuesday talk proves he’s no Trump

With a little bit of time on my relentlessly scrubbed hands on Tuesday, I tuned in at noon to watch Gov. Gavin Newsom talk about the half-dozen goals that he feels need to be met before people can begin to trickle back into whatever semblance of society that will remain after COVID-19 calms down a bit.

It was a sober, not overly optimistic address. In short, things aren’t going back to “normal” for a long time.

But what may be the most troubling is the fact that Newsom doesn’t seem to have learned anything from the almost-daily briefings from the chief executive of the United States. It makes me wonder if they’re even in the same business.

In that spirit, I’m generously offering a critique from The Trump Point of View. For instance:

Not once did Gov. Newsom prophesize that the disease would miraculously disappear, either because of warm weather or, you know, a regular miracle.

It’s called giving people hope. Throw them a bone. Doesn’t have to have a basis in truth. Promote global warming as a way to cure this disease. It’s just crazy enough it might work.

Never did Newsom take personal credit for the fine work that he’s done in the state, by parading people who work for him up to the podium to give passionate testimonials about their leader.

Never let anyone under you think they have anything to do with anything. You’re the boss; don’t pal around with the help. If they can’t say anything good about you, maybe they’d be happier working on an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

He never said he predicted the pandemic long before anyone else did.

Are you a person of vision, Governor? Can you not even take a wild guess at what calamity is in the offing? Make one up and when it doesn’t happen, take credit for stopping it. Is this your first day in politics?

Newsom forgot to lambaste the real enemies in the war against the coronavirus: The lamestream media and the Republican Party. Or former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Never, ever let the media get away with reporting the facts. Facts are slippery and rarely true. And the other party is always the enemy. Forget that and they’ll eat you alive. The refs don’t call unnecessary roughness in politics.

He made the mistake of letting another expert, Dr. Sonia Angell, California’s public health director, talk and forgot to refute what she said.

Don’t ever forget that your intelligence is what got you here. You’re the governor. Shame her a little. Let her know that by tomorrow afternoon you could have her working as a dental assistant in a strip mall in Twenty-Nine Palms.

He forgot to give us a precise end date, like Easter, May 1, or even “very, very soon.”

Look, you’re not going to end this until you have an end date. Now, call it Mother’s Day and stick to it. We’ve got to get business moving again. Nobody’s going to vote for you if you start another Great Depression and let the Joads run wild over California.

Newsom gave too much credit to other people: medical professionals, academics at such California institutions as Stanford, Scripps and Berkeley, other research partners, the governors of the states of Washington and Oregon, and the people of California.

When you make other people important, it lessens your own influence. Do you see a Governor’s certificate on their walls? Because I don’t.

Omitted from Newsom’s talk was a frank admission regarding his supreme intelligence.

Would it have killed you to say, “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.” That would be the kind of talk people could rally behind.