Victor Davis Hanson Says Gavin Newsom ‘Lost The Narrative’ On Left’s Sacred Cow

Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson said on Fox News Thursday evening that Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom “lost the narrative” on climate change as many people continue to distance themselves from the “green” movement.

Newsom, widely considered a frontrunner to win the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, attended the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Brazil, where he called President Donald Trump an “invasive species.” The conference kicked off Monday. Hanson said Newsom and his allies who support strict regulations to combat climate change increasingly find themselves in the minority.

“I think Gavin Newsom is a reactionary. They have lost the narrative. The world has passed them by,” Hanson told host Laura Ingraham on “The Ingraham Angle.”

“[Carl XVI Gustaf], no conservative, the King of Sweden, said we only as Europeans commit 6% of global emissions, and yet we are ruining our economy by going to the wind and solar while all of our competitors are beating us, and they are destroying our civilization,” Hanson added. “And then Bill Gates, he said basically, ‘I don’t believe it anymore because we need energy for my AI [artificial intelligence] enterprises.’” (RELATED: ‘Everything Is Starting To Change’: Victor Davis Hanson Says Pressure Mounting On Putin And His War On Ukraine)

Gates, well known for climate change activism, made headlines in late October when he said global warming is not an existential crisis that would result in “humanity’s demise.”

“All of these geostrategic issues made these people parochial, irrelevant, I don’t know what they are. But they are not into what most people on the planet are worried about,” Hanson said, referring to Newsom and other COP30 attendees.

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“And they want, Victor, America to suffer particularly … because of our abundance, because of our freedom,” Ingraham said. “They hate our Second Amendment. They hate our Fifth Amendment, our Fourth. They hate all of it.”

Hanson responded.

“China has a Cheshire grin because they’re dumping solar and wind materials and plants all over the world … while they build coal plants at two a month and nuclear plants and hope to get cheaper energy than anybody and then hook us up on buying their solar and wind materials that are very expensive and will ruin our economy,” Hanson said.

As governor of California, Newsom shepherded several stringent policies in the name of fighting climate change.

Newsom’s administration in 2022 implemented the “Advanced Clean Cars II,” a de facto electric vehicle (EV) mandate that sought to gradually ban the sale of traditional gasoline-powered cars in the Golden State by 2035. In June, Congress passed and Trump signed resolutions to rescind the mandate prompting California to sue.

CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten on Oct. 29 discussed Gallup polling data showing that the proportion of Americans “greatly worried” about climate change has remained the same over the past 25 years. Enten also added that only 2% of Americans in 2025 consider climate change the top issue facing the U.S. according to a CNN/SSRS poll.

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