If you think you know how bad things are in California, you don’t. If you think you know how corrupt the state’s leading politicians are, it’s worse than that. Sticky-fingered pols pushing woke policies have turned the Golden State into fool’s gold.
That’s the title of a new book out March 11 by two investigative reporters—Susan Crabtree of RealClearPolitics, and the Government Accountability Institute’s own Jedd McFatter. Fool’s Gold: The Radicals, Con Artists, and Traitors Who Killed the California Dream and Now Threaten Us All exposes the shocking truth behind California’s fall from grace, and how progressives want to do it to the rest of the nation. The book exposes the corruption of California’s leading Democratic lights—Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Adam Schiff, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Jedd and Susan join Peter Schweizer and Eric Eggers on the most recent episode of The Drill Down to name names and share what they found. “The book makes a perfect gift for all the California lefties in your life,” Eggers quips.
“Why don’t we start with the head honcho, Gavin Newsom,” says Schweizer.
“Everything about Governor Newsom is performative, not performance based,” says Crabtree, who is a California resident. “Everything has been handed to him on a silver platter, from his college admission to his winemaking career to his political rise. He is basically just performing, making it up as he goes along. That’s why he can say that he cares about the California wildfire victims.”
Her book shows how much Newsom has taken from Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the state’s largest and most troubled utility company. “So, PG&E is one of several utilities in California that have a monopoly… They’re in bed with the California Democrats. They’ve given $2.5 million to Gavin Newsom, and they are responsible for the most deadly wildfire in the state’s history (the ‘Camp Fire’ that killed 85 people).”
Newsom’s wife took $700,000 from the utility for a personal crusade. “His wife was so close to PG&E that she produced documentaries that promote transgender ideology,” Crabtree found. “And they came with a curriculum that she sold to 5,000 schools across the country. So, they’re exporting their values to the rest of the country, and they made a tidy little profit of $1.4 million.” PG&E gave money to her films and even held a screening in the downtown San Francisco skyscraper that is their headquarters.
But nothing beats the “monument.” McFatter tells the hosts that story.
“Around 2015, there were some new articles that came out that talked about this bronze bust that was coming of Gavin Newsom. Gavin shrugged it off. He said he didn’t really know who was behind it,” McFatter says. “But what we found was that in 2016, the ‘behested payment system’ for California shows that Gavin Newsom actually solicited tax-exempt funds from three different organizations to help fund either the creation, installation, or maintenance of his own bronze bust. And two of the companies that donated money were his own actual companies. So, in that sense, he partially funded his own statue.”
Schweizer asks why this kind of behavior and incompetence isn’t challenged or doesn’t get people riled up.
Crabtree says, “I’ve talked about this with so many people, and it’s a great question, Peter. First of all, the legacy media out here cozies up to the Democratic establishment and is part of the problem… It’s basically one-party rule.”
“There’s one-party rule because there’s been so much immigration into the state that now it’s basically a two-to-one ratio between Democrat registered voters and Republicans,” she says, noting that Donald Trump did better this time. “Trump got 6 million votes to 9 million for Kamala Harris, but still not enough.”
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