When Kirk asked for Kiley’s thoughts on the fact that Newsom recently took to Twitter to challenge Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to a debate, Kiley responded by saying that such a debate would not “go well at all” for Newsom.
“I mean it would be a very clear choice: Do you want to live in the state that everyone is leaving, or do you want to live in the state that people are moving to,” said Kiley. “Gavin Newsom has brought California to a breaking point. We had for 170 straight years of our state’s history more people were coming to California than were leaving. It took Gavin Newsom taking office to reverse that trend.”
Kiley went on to suggest that the challenge is just another instance of Newsom “trying to get his name in the headlines, build his profile however he can.”
“That’s what he’s been doing since the beginning of his governorship by the way. He would do all these sort of desperate gambits and ploys from the moment he took office,” said Kiley. “As soon as COVID-19 started, he viewed this as a huge PR opportunity and our entire Covid policy was crafted around the objective of getting him in the headlines and building his national profile as much as possible. That’s why he insisted on having one-man-rule. You could get in the headlines faster if you could just rule things by fiat.”
“And so this has been something we’ve had to deal with for quite some time. It frustrates even democrats in our legislature that he doesn’t even bother to deal with them in a lot of cases. He just wants to go straight to the news cameras. And it’s been no secret either that the end game has all along been an eventual presidential run, which it seems he’s nearing closer to every day.”
