Dave Rubin’s latest Direct Message clip, in which he walks through a private conversation with Gad Saad and Viva Frei, pulls back the curtain on a familiar pattern: liberal governors styling bad news as “nuanced truth” while the people living it pay the price. Rubin’s audience knows he doesn’t pull punches, and his DM highlights how Gavin Newsom’s spin to friendly national media doesn’t square with what Californians see on their sidewalks and in their wallets.
On The Ezra Klein Show, Newsom tried to paper over California’s collapse by arguing that headline economic statistics don’t capture the “lived experience” of ordinary people — a neat rhetorical dodge that lets him have both a bragging point and a get-out-of-jail-free card. He even admitted homelessness and poverty are the “poster child” of the state’s failures, yet immediately pivoted to talking about lofty visions and selective accomplishments. That sort of selective framing is exactly what conservative critics have been warning about for years.
The single devastating detail Newsom keeps ignoring is the migration math: Californians are leaving in steady numbers, and those flows tell a much truer story than any governor’s talking points. When people vote with their feet — moving their families and businesses to safer, more affordable, and lower-tax states — that’s not some abstract “lived experience,” it’s a hemorrhage of talent, taxpayers, and common sense. The Census’s state-to-state migration data shows this pattern isn’t anecdote; it’s structural.
If Newsom wants to parade 110,000 “housing units completed last year” as proof everything is fine, fine — but tents on sidewalks, rising disorder, and small businesses closing don’t vanish because a bureaucrat tallies ribbon-cuttings. Californians are tired of virtue-signaling that treats policy failures as mere inconveniences. The truth is harsh: building a few housing units at bureaucratic speed while allowing lawlessness and punitive taxation to persist will never fix the root causes that drive citizens away.
The policy implications are predictable: high taxes, overregulation, and soft-on-crime rhetoric create incentives for capital and people to flee, and elected officials who ignore that consequence are failing their constituents. Scholarly and policy analyses have repeatedly shown that tax-policy and regulatory climates correlate with migration flows; when the state piles on more penalties for success, it shouldn’t be surprised when success walks out the door. Conservatives haven’t been alarmist — we’ve been right about the incentives that matter.
Americans who still believe in stewardship, law and order, and fiscal responsibility should be furious that a governor can charm a New York Times host while dismissing the very people who keep his state functioning. We need leaders who tell the truth, fix the broken incentives, and restore dignity to public spaces — not polished narratives designed for coastal cocktail parties. It’s time to hold Gavin Newsom and his allies accountable for the damage their policies have done to hardworking Californians.
