CHUCK DEVORE: Newsom: Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has lost residents to other states. When pressed about it, Newsom tries to defend himself and provides his side of the story, but what he says overlooks important context. In part one of our…
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has lost residents to other states. When pressed about it, Newsom tries to defend himself and provides his side of the story, but what he says overlooks important context. In part one of our look at Shawn Ryan’s marathon mid-July podcast with Newsom, we provide that context.
A fellow former Californian wise enough to move to Texas told me I should check out Shawn Ryan’s mid-July podcast interview of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. She texted, “…the world needs someone like u to call out his self-serving use of facts and lies.”
At the top of the podcast, Ryan jokingly asked if Newsom flew to Tennessee to “…hang out with the 92,000 Californians?”
Newsom, deeply stung by California’s massive three straight years of net outmigration, was quick to claim a thin victory, saying, “You hit me right there, man. The California exit. By the way, complete bullshit now. The last two years, we’ve seen significant growth in California’s population. So. it’s reversed.”
Really? Let’s take a look. Data from the Public Policy Institute of California indicates that between July 2023 and July 2024, California’s population grew by 49,000 people, an anemic 0.13% increase. Newsom is likely claiming further growth through July of this year. This followed after a three-year decline of 412,000 people between July 2020 and July 2023—8.4 times the amount of growth the year before. The growth California did see last year was composed of a net gain of 361,057 international immigrants—including former President Joe Biden’s tsunami of illegal aliens—offsetting a domestic out-migration of 239,575 residents in 2024 plus natural births and deaths.
Newsom’s use of the term “significant growth” is doing a lot of work here. While California’s continued net out-migration to states like Texas and Florida persist, screaming underlying dissatisfaction with California’s high cost of living and taxes.
Newsom also brought up California’s “record-breaking tourism” in 2024. OK, what’s that about? Tourism spending reached $157.3 billion in 2024, a 3% increase from 2023, according to Visit California. But the Consumer Price Index was up 2.9% in 2024 while the inflation rate for the