Below is my column in The Hill on the recent appearance of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) in Munich. They found the perfect audience for pledging to reverse many current policies and re-embrace a high-taxation, high-regulation platform. The Europeans were giddy with excitement as they doubled down on policies that have stagnated many of their economies.
Here is the column:
This week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) joined the many Californians now seeking their fortune elsewhere. The difference is that Newsom is planning to come back to California, even as billionaires, investors, and companies flee his state for greener pastures.
Newsom and Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) were selling a brave new world that looked a lot like the broken old world. It was an ironic moment. They were addressing countries at the Munich Security Conference that had previously destroyed their economies through socialist and far-left policies.
The rush of liberal Democratic officeholders to Europe was telling. A new poll shows that a record 58 percent of voters believe their party is “too liberal.” But Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez found a welcoming audience in Europe.
The global elite gushed over Ocasio-Cortez and sat enraptured as she rattled off socialist platitudes. That included New York Times correspondent Katrin Bennhold, who thrilled the audience by treating it as a given that Ocasio-Cortez will run for president.
Both Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez spoke of returning the U.S. to the good graces of the global elite. Newsom assured the Europeans that Trump’s reign is temporary, and that the U.S. will soon enough dismantle the “wrecking ball” that the administration has taken to the EU.
Newsom offered his leadership and his state as the model, proclaiming that “California is a stable and reliable partner” for Europe. The model includes high taxes, massive spending programs and greater bureaucratic regulations — precisely the policies that have driven the European economy into its current stagnation. In other words, Democrats were in Europe to offer precisely what Newsom outwardly condemned: “doubling down on stupid.”
When not fumbling with security questions about issues such as Taiwan, Ocasio-Cortez was demanding that wealth taxes be implemented in the U.S. “expeditiously.” Such a tax on billionaires’ wealth, including unrealized gains, is currently being pushed in California. The predictable result is that billionaires and other wealthy citizens are rushing to leave the state and taking their investments and companies with them.
Ocasio-Cortez had the audience at hello.
Rather than having Vice President J.D. Vance shaming them for their attacks on free speech, the Europeans positively gushed over Democratic leaders pushing far-left agendas. It did not matter that such policies devastated European economies in the 20th century.
In my book “Rage and the Republic,” I discuss the rise of support for socialism in both the U.S. and Europe. Many of those supporting it are young voters with no memory of the collapse of socialist economies in the 20th Century. In 1977, Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan pursued many of the same socialist policies, leading to what was called the “winter of discontent” as inflation hit 25 percent. With the collapse of the British pound, the United Kingdom had to take the demoralizing step of securing a loan from the International Monetary Fund, as if it were a developing country.
In France, François Mitterrand was also elected to pursue his “rupture with capitalism.” The French economy collapsed; Mitterrand quickly had to reverse himself and restore capitalist policies.
That history is rarely discussed or taught today. The “warmth of collectivism,” as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani put it, is back in vogue. It does not matter that, in Argentina, President Javier Milei is achieving one of the most impressive economic turnarounds in history — dramatically curtailing runaway inflation, government deficits and poverty — by reinstating free-market policies and reducing government spending.
What is chilling about Europe is that the EU has strangled growth with its increasingly centralized controls and massive bureaucracy. My book describes the instability of the EU and its global governance model. Europe is facing populist movements and, like many Democrats, the response has been calls for further consolidation of power. This included the creation of a new, uniform European corporate law, known as the “28th Regime.”
With an economy crushed by a massive EU bureaucracy and regulations, the solution of many is all too familiar: borrow more money. French President Emmanuel Macron and others want to issue “Euro bonds” to spend their way into an economic recovery — another policy ideal shared with many on the American left.
This week was only the latest effort of the American left to strengthen an alliance with the EU. Previously, American leaders such as Hillary Clinton pushed the EU to censor Americans online after free speech protections were restored by companies like Twitter. Likewise, the American left is enamored with the EU’s global bureaucracy and regulations.
Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez certainly found their element in Munich, and the EU certainly found the “reliable partners” it has longed for in creating “a new World Order with European Values.”
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
One comment only — what is wrong with the American people?! Are they blind, stupid, and unconscious? Any citizen that thinks the Dems want won’t [ass the Save Act, is because they actually care about voting integrity, are again, ‘blind, stupid and conscious’! God help our republic!
Okay one more comment — let’s see if Congress can pass a NO INSIDER TRADING Bill!!! Now that will be amazing!!!!
It should embarrass every American that AOC was elected by any group in America to represent them at any level.
The real question is not whether Newsom or AOC play well in Munich.
The question is this: Are we intentionally forming citizens capable of sustaining our constitutional republic, or are we gradually being formed into something more compatible with the European model of centralized governance?
Every political system forms its own citizen. A constitutional republic requires citizens with the capacity for self-government. If we do not intentionally form that citizen, we will drift toward a system that requires less of them.
It used to be considered unpatriotic to go overseas and criticize the President or the country. This is a “norm” that Democratic are happy to flout.
So the Democrats are doubling-down on corruption and superficiality. What’s new?
The Republicans are barely any better.
Europe, including the UK, looks lost. Let it go. Fix the home front first.
We are living in the WTF era.
“Newsom offered his leadership and his state as the model . . .” (JT)
There’s a better model for both California and Europe: Weimar Germany. I’m sure the Left will concoct a way to evade the troubling omen attached to that culture.
I can picture the former bartender, upon hearing some of the question, saying to herself “who is Taiwan.” We have the voters in a NYC Congressional District to thank for the likes of her.
Sure Cletus, sure.
Why are AOC and Newsom marketing themselves to Europeans? Is it because they are globalists who don’t give two whits about the American taxpayers whose money they confiscate?
Look at what is going on in places like NYC and Virginia and you will see that there is enough “stupid” that Newsom and/or AOC being elected President is a real possibility.
When the Dems “audited” the 2024 election some said the party veered too far to the left and held positions that the average voter couldn’t abide. So it is only a year or so on and the Dems are doubling down on being the party of the far left. I understand that it is the primary system that causes the candidates to appeal to the far left of the party, but the commercials are being cut as we speak and the die is cast.
I do find it amusing that some, like Hilary Clinton, will say “yes, we need a secure border….”, but they are never forced to answer the dreaded follow-up question of what to do with the 10 million that Biden AND THE DEMS let in over 3 and 1/2 years. Unfortunately for them the people see, and sense, that Dems are doing everything in their power to keep all illegals here, even violent criminals. Now when X or some other far left partisan says that it isn’t so please ask them why blue cities and states won’t contact ICE when a MAN is caught committing a crime, in in jail awaiting a court hearing. THEY DON’T WANT ANY ILLEGALS REMOVED NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY…and the people know it.
PS. Ask the leftist candidates, Newsome, AOC, Pritzker, Chris Murphy, Warren, Khanna, what they think should be done about boys in girls sports. Newsome tried the “it’s not fair” line but then continued with the same policies in CA. ASK THEM A FOLLOW-UP!!
Ask them about energy policies and EV mandates. Ask them about Maduro. Ask them about Iran and nukes. Ask them about Hamas. Ask them about voter ID.
PSS. If them Republicans can manage to nominate Marco Rubio they win and win big.
Does any of that have to do with Turley’s article? Nope.
Odd but I thought the article dealt with leftist candidates for the Democrat nomination outlining their far left policy ideas in the European theater and how these policies might play in the States. But as for you I guess it is just easier to be the parasite that gets up every morning and makes a snide reply comment to every person that comes to this site to give their opinion.
And that is exactly what he is, hullbobby. He can’t even read, let alone comprehend.
And / or ask the question do you support transgender surgeries for minors?
Do you support government spending levels which cause 2 trillion dollar deficits?
What will the consequences of 2 trillion dollar interest payments be for the dollar being the global reserve currency and at what point do we default on the debt?
If we have endless time to devote the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie surely we can have serious discussions on matters of national importance
Hell yeah! The two greatest advocates for Political Duct Tape. Excellent for silencing the mouth of dissent, binding your opponents like hogs to the slaughter, and then leaving the sticky side up to catch any pesky citizenry that stumble along, don’t bow down, and need to be re-educated in the way of Enlightenment! Where better to advertise your Trojan Horse craft than the DUMP IN DECLINE known as Europe.
“Europe is belatedly discovering how unbelievably stupid it was to import millions of people from cultures that despise Western values and which often promote hatred toward the people who have let them in.”……..Thomas Sowell
There is little more to say about this other than these United States are also subject to the same threat from that ‘Fifth Column’ presently in place and at work.
I have a different take on the Newsom-AOC tour of the EU. Sure, the Europeans loved the socialist rhetoric; they speak the same language. They share the same climate mandates and anti-capitalist leanings, and they certainly worship at the altar of Big Government. But this ‘fearsome duo’ came across as so profoundly ignorant that they left their hosts questioning if their brand of socialism is even viable. Reality hits hardest when it shatters your bubble from the outside.
Why are you wasting space on aoc and newscum while Marco Rubio receives an ovation for being at the same event and calling out European stupidity.
Because he’s pointing out the absurdity of their responses to critical questions about US foreign policy. The potential future leaders of the USA.
There never was a pony that couldn’t be rode, there never was a cowboy that couldn’t be throwed. In the last stanza of the Strawberry Roan, the bronc rider sings “he turned his old belly right up to the sun. He sure is a sunfishing son of a gun”. To explain how he got bucked off. This model of our Left and some of the Old World is that Strawberry Roan. Why would we quit the reliable mount we have?
So what Mike.
Parasite!
Europeans are (but I have my doubts they really were as Turley suggests) intrigued by CA man, tanned, white teeth etc, and the NYC bar girl, lies in the fact that they really did not understand them as we Americans do – as leftist crazies. The were impressed by their simple leftist rhetoric and looks. They did not notice how Witmer, AOC and Newsom flubbed their answers to basic questions. Especially Witmer. Pretty faces, empty heads. Rubio was a star.
And, yeah, oh woe is us.
All 3 dems are possible pres candidates in 2028.
There was a time when it was commonplace to restrain your criticism for America and America’s president when you were overseas. Of course, that was before Donald Trump was elected and Democrats decided that everything was permissible, including launching a coup d’etat and attempting to sentence him to life in prison, in an effort to seize and maintain power.
Oh woe is us.