California Congressman Tom McClintock praises Gavin Newsom’s French Laundry visit

Gov. Gavin Newsom got an unlikely defender Thursday: conservative Rep. Tom McClintock, who said Newsom’s “night of partying should be a wake-up call to every American.”

The California Republican, who since the pandemic began in March has been blasting away at what he considers an overly intrusive government, found comfort in Newsom’s visit to Napa County’s French Laundry restaurant.

”Let us not criticize Governor Newsom. Perhaps he has just offered us all deliverance from his own folly. ... The governor SHOULD make his own decisions about running his own life. I only ask that he and his ilk would stop telling the rest of us how to run ours,” McClintock said in a House floor speech.

Newsom is under fire for attending a birthday party at the posh restaurant with several friends in Napa Valley at the same time he’s cracking down on public gatherings as coronavirus numbers jump. Newsom apologized for attending.

McClintock praised the governor “because he was doing what we all once did in a free society: make our own decisions over what risks we are willing to run and what precautions we are willing to take according to our own circumstances to protect our own health.”

The congressman’s logic: “Every time we step outside our homes, the risks we face multiply. A free society assumes that its citizens are competent to assess those risks, balance them against the avoidance costs and to manage their decisions in a generally responsible way.”

McClintock has been a consistent critic of what he sees as overly intrusive government edicts during the coronavirus pandemic, and has blasted Newsom’s policies in the past. “In California, this abusive power has been used to deny citizens the right to protest the abuse itself,” he said of the governor’s restrictions this spring.

The congressman said earlier this year that wearing a mask is an individual decision.

“I wouldn’t criticize anybody for wearing a mask or not for wearing a mask. As I said, if you feel safer wearing a mask, wear a mask. And if you are in a high risk group, you do need to stay at home,” he said.

But Thursday, he lauded Newsom because he “recently defied his own idiotic COVID edicts as he partied at one of the few restaurants that he has not yet forced out of business.”

Look, said McClintock, who was just re-elected for a seventh House term, COVID-19 is a frightening disease that has killed some 250,000 people in the United States.

“But this isn’t the Bubonic Plague,” he said. Survival rates are high.

“Forty percent who get it don’t even know they have it. Yet we have allowed our officials to ruin our quality of life over it — destroying countless businesses, throwing tens of millions into unemployment, robbing our children of their educations and shredding our most cherished rights as Americans,” he said.

McClintock continued to fire away Thursday at what he saw as too much government involvement.

“These government nannies love to tell us that they’re just following the science. What does the science tell us? It tells us that COVID poses virtually no risk to children but can be severe among the elderly. So, what did these lockdown leftists do? They closed all the schools and ordered infected patients into nursing homes!” he said.

Despite evidence that strict measures send exposure and death rates declining this summer, “These lockdowns haven’t saved lives,” McClintock said.

He couldn’t resist a jab at Newsom, noting that the governor “demanded that restaurant diners replace their masks after every bite, but also minimize the times they take them off. I guess that means take very big bites.”

And, said McClintock, “Thanksgiving dinners are allowed in California, but only when they are held outside, guests are seated six feet apart, and they last no more than two hours. It’s all right to use the bathroom, but only if it is frequently sanitized. Otherwise, presumably you’ll just have to use the bushes. And for God’s sake – NO SINGING!”