California Governor Gavin Newsom's Tourism Pitch to Canadians is Tone-Deaf and Insulting

Do you think we're stupid?

I saw on Bluesky and Tiktok that the Democratic Governor of California is launching an “international” ad campaign to attract Canadians back to California.

It emphasizes that last year, 2-million Canadians travelled to California, while skipping the whole part where “you-know-who” got elected.

It is hard to imagine a more tone-deaf pitch to Canadians .

“Sure, you-know-who is trying to stir things up back in DC, but don't let that ruin your vacation plans.

We're launching a new international campaign to welcome and encourage Canadians to visit the Golden State.”

Part of the video, captured below, emphasizes that it is 2,000 miles from Washington, DC, to California.

I would love to travel to California. There are lots of places I would love to visit, people I would like to see, but there is no way that is going to happen right now, and that is the general consensus of all of the comments beneath the posts on Bluesky and Tiktok.

This pitch is so oblivious to the reality that Canadians are dealing with that it is galling.

It’s hard to see this and not ask “Do you think we’re stupid?”

Are we supposed to believe that because Washington DC is on the other side of the continent from California that you’ve got a different president?

We get the same news. We can see what’s going on.

Canadians are not going to the U.S. for damn good reasons. We can’t trust the US government anymore, and we don’t feel safe.

Instead of dismissing these complaints and asking us for money, quite frankly, we would appreciate some support and solidarity.

In March, a 35-year old Canadian who went to renew her work visa was detained for eleven days - in California.

Mooney spent 11 days in custody — off and on in cement cells she says are dubbed "ice boxes" — with little more than a thin foil emergency blanket. Mooney says she faced numerous transfers, humiliating medical tests, degrading treatment and no answers — despite pleas to let her pay for her own flight home. She at first refused food and couldn't sleep, but then forced herself to get up and help others.

"It breaks you. That place breaks you into a million pieces. It is so disgusting what goes on in there," Mooney told CBC News in an interview on Thursday.

Her case is one of a series of instances involving non-U.S. travellers that has travellers and legal experts concerned.

Mooney's story has become a sort of warning, a harbinger of a shifting attitude toward Canadians travelling or trying to work in the U.S.

Immigration lawyers are urging people who need visa renewals to opt to go to airports, where they can be processed on Canadian soil, with no risk of getting detained if they are deemed ineligible.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) today issued an advisory to academics.

“Canadian academics warned to halt non-essential travel to the U.S. amid Trump's crackdown, border tensions

The Canadian Association of University Teachers says people in certain categories, including those who have criticized Trump, face heightened risks.

Aside from official responses, Canadians are engaged in a voluntary, grassroots mass boycott of the U.S. in response to months of lies about our country, abuse and threats from a President whose illegal tariffs are designed to wreck our economy and starve us into submission so they can take over Canada, and end our way of life.

Those include relentless false statements claiming that Canada is a security threat, with relentless lies about fentanyl and irregular border crossings.

The Trump administration lied about Canada being a serious source of fentanyl, when the U.S exports far more fentanyl and illegal weapons into Canada.

Peter Navarro, Trump’s tariff advisor who invented a fake economist in his own books, lied and claimed Canada has been taken over by Mexican cartels.

Trump has lied about the U.S. “subsidizing” Canada, because the U.S. has a trade deficit on energy with Canada, ignoring that we Canada is the single biggest customer the United States has, in the world. We buy more from the U.S. than China, Japan and several other countries combined.

Trump is serious about taking over Canada. Supposed experts and pundits have pointed out that Canada would have as many electoral votes and congressional seats as California, which would provide Democrats with a permanent majority.

This scenario, which is supposed to be in Canada’s “defense” still assumes the total eradication of our existing political system, laws, and political parties.

The response from Trump advisors has been to recommend that Canada be a U.S. territory instead, so Canadians wouldn’t even have a right to vote.

All of this is a disgusting, shameful betrayal of Canada by a country that we have had productive, prosperous partnerships with, and spent decades fighting side by side the U.S., and often entered the fray while the U.S. did nothing.

In the First World War, Canada started fighting in 1914. Both my grandparents and several great uncles served in combat.

In the Second World War, Canada started fighting in 1939. We didn’t sit around like the U.S. did and play isolationist while the axis powers swarmed around the world. On D-Day, Canada had an entire beach - Juno beach - to ourselves for the invasion of Normandy.

Canada fought in Korea, but not Vietnam. When the U.S. wanted to place nuclear weapons on Canadian soil in the 1980s, we said no.

We fought in the first Iraq war and served as peacekeepers in Yugoslavia.

After 9/11, we provided shelter to Americans who were stranded and fought in Afghanistan with NATO and the U.S.

When it came to the 2003 Iraq war, Canada stayed out.

All of that is now in ashes, as the President of the U.S. aligns himself with enemies and attacks America’s closest allies, like Canada and Europe.

The total betrayal of Ukraine is also important for Canada, and the actions of Trump and JD Vance in trying to humiliate Vladimir Zelenskyy as they repeated Kremlin propaganda was beyond shameful.

Canada has long had a special relationship with Ukraine dating back decades. Canada has had Ukrainian immigrants for more than a century, and Canada was the first country to recognize Ukraine as a country when it asserted its independence from Russia.

Many Americans have been successfully brainwashed by Russian propaganda - with Kremlin operatives paying U.S. far-right mouthpieces to repeat their attacks on Ukraine.

The passionate hatred of Russia by Ukraine is not new. It goes back decades, and the U.S. and most of the world still seems to be unaware of the Holodomor, the genocidal forced starvation of millions of Ukrainans by Russia in 1932-33.

Canada’s democracy is under threat by the U.S., and the threats being made are arguably violations of both U.S. and international law.

It does not help that Newsom has people like Trump’s advisor Steve Bannon on his podcast. Bannon was in jail for contempt of congress and is one of the architects of Trump’s victory, and he is a lunatic who proposed that Trump run again, illegally, for a third term.

It also does not help that California techbros and billionaires who are playing an active role in dismantling American democracy and interfering in Canada’s.

Strangely, every single one of the very rich men in this story also have a very weird relationship to their hair, or the fact they seem to have enhance it in order to compensate for their less than fully virile and masculine appearance.

• Elon Musk, who not only donated to and campaigned for Trump, but turned Twitter into a cesspool of hate and lies that boosted misinformation while suppressing facts, and is currently vandalizing the Federal Government. Musk donated to the Freedom Convoy - a Canadian protest that sought to topple the government.

• Marc Andreesen, who quotes and praises fascists in his manifesto and who is one of the people helping musk at DOGE

• The other spineless toadies of Silicon Valley who surrendered their integrity to Trump at the inauguration, including Mark Zuckerberg - who agreed to change Facebook moderation, or Jeff Bezos, who has decreed that the Washington Post op-eds not be critical of the “free market,” when Trump is running a kleptocracy.

That’s what Canadians are up against. We realize it’s not all Americans, but that doesn’t make a difference when it comes to our vacation or spending plans.

If Newsom wants to be helpful to Canadians and to his fellow Americans, he’ll take a stand against the blatant lawlessness of the current President to make America Sane and Safe again.

Whistling past the graveyard of American Democracy is not the way to do it.

What is happening right now in the U.S. is an American tragedy. Trump risks destroying America, because he is engaged in a full on assault on everything good America has ever stood for.

So, as a Canadian who would love to be able to return to the U.S. and visit, my feedback to California Governor Gavin Newsom is that instead of asking me to run the risk of a security gauntlet and questioning at the U.S. border, and supporting a regime that is on the record as wanting to occupy and subjugate my country and my fellow citizens, I suggest that he do his job and enforce the law.

Defend the U.S. constitution. Defend the U.S. First Amendment. Defend the 14th amendment. Defend the constitutional right to vote.

Defend the best of the founding principles of the US - the idea that it is self-evident that people were created equal. Due process. Individual rights and freedoms.

I will say one more thing. The U.S. Supreme Court passed an appalling ruling that essentially gives the President of the United States permission to commit a crime in his official duties. It is astonishing that a high court would make such a ruling - especially one where judges who are “constitutional orginalists” spend their time LARPing as founding fathers.

It may be the case that the President of the United States is allowed to commit crimes - and that he has been able to abuse his power of pardon to forgive all sorts of convicted criminals who have immediately gone on to commit heinous crimes.

The President declaring that something is legal does not make it so. In the military, people are free to refuse illegal orders.

There is considerable case law and jurisprudence around people being forced under duress to commit a crime. The bar is very high.

The question facing Americans is whether, because the Supreme Court has ruled that the President has certain immunities to commit crimes in his official duties, whether that immunity extends to subordinates, and that the President and his surrogates are able to run a criminal conspiracy without being arrested.

I’m not a lawyer - but I suspect the answer is “no.” Right now, the lunatics are running the asylum because they think no one can stop them.

The answer to this lawlessness is to enforce the law, and to ask that others follow it.

The turn against Trump in Canada was palpable. You could see and feel it on social media: the tide turned, because Canadians were clearly awakened to the threat.

The same is now happening with Trump in the U.S. It is also palpable. His cheerleaders look grim.

Enforcing the law fairly and ending these abuses of power are what need to happen to rebuild and restore America. It’s what other countries want for the U.S., for themselves as well as for American citizens.

But for Christ’s sake, don’t ask Canadians to turn a blind eye and worry about our vacation plans being spoiled.

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DFL