Gavin Newsom Wants You to Know It's Not His Fault That He Doesn't Know What He's Doing

We’d wager that even Polymarket couldn’t put a number on just how calamitous critics see Gavin Newsom as a governor—and an even worse hand at foreign policy. Now, however, the California governor seems to have an answer ready. In short, he suggests it’s not his fault that he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Newsom’s latest revelation had been brewing for months, but it burst onto the world stage at the Munich Security Conference, where he told an audience—some of whom reportedly gasped—that the National Guard, federal immigration agents, and American law enforcement were akin to the Nazis in Germany.

Oh, yes, he did. 

You're gonna wanna bookmark this for when he runs for president.

While in Germany, far-left @CAgovernor Newsom smeared American #lawenforcement by comparing them to Nazis.

NEWSOM: "Masked men, secret police, something familiar in Germany."

THIS is what he thinks of the men and… pic.twitter.com/dN073BbKWy

— Blue Lives Matter (@bluelivesmtr) February 16, 2026

In that same meeting, Newsom, who wants to be president someday, also declared that the National Guard deployment to stop last June’s Los Angeles anti-ICE riots was a one-off, “illegal,” and “unprecedented.”

On his podcast, Verdict, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called Newsom’s comments “historically illiterate,” especially his commentary that “the National Guard has never been federalized without a governor’s consent before.”

Newsom’s response should be put in the Butthurt Hall of Shame.

Let’s first, however, grapple with the veracity of the brilliant Texas senator’s characterization of Newsom as “historically illiterate.”

I asked Perplexity AI to make up a chart of some of the federalized National Guard troop uses. Note that three incidents — L.A. riots 1992, L.A. riots 2026, and George Floyd riots 2020 — were in Newsom’s home state.

Anyone who's paid any kind of attention to Newsom's and others' histrionics concerning the National Guard deployments knows that they were deployed during the Civil Rights movement to allow black children to go to school while Democrats blocked the schoolhouse door. How does Gavin Newsom not know that? 

But here was butthurt Newsom's reaction to Cruz's insult that the California governor was "historically illiterate." 

"Ted Cruz calling a dyslexic person illiterate is a new low, even for him," Newsom, or his publicly paid-for tweeters, said.

Ted Cruz calling a dyslexic person illiterate is a new low, even for him. https://t.co/XC75ybiGKd

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) February 16, 2026

His response was beside-the-point, off-putting, and thin-skinned—but crystal clear about his best-case strategy for navigating future dumb statements in the 2028 presidential race: “Hey, man, I'm dyslexic, I have no idea what I'm doing. Now, watch me cross my legs and gesticulate.”

Worse, he's rolling out this vote for me because I'm dyslexic play in a campaign book he's launching at the end of February in which he talks about his tough life with his poor mother, California state judge father, and their friends at the J. Paul Getty mansion. It's the first time many people are learning that the worst governor in California history has trouble reading. 

Do you suppose this is why he keeps losing billions of dollars of other people's money, effortlessly lies, and went to The French Laundry when you were locked down for COVID? Who knew that the side effects of dyslexia were so bad for citizens? 

I know plenty of people with dyslexia and I've never heard them once say that they thought National Guardsmen were Nazis due to difficulties decoding the language. 

We've known for awhile that the California governor is duplicitous and preening, but when he was taken to task by Ted Cruz for failing to remember things that happened during his lifetime in his state, Newsom's response was a new low — even for him.