In addition to being governor and a probable Democratic presidential hopeful, Gavin Newsom is now something else: duplicitous.

On June 26, in a video posted to X just one day after a California billionaire tax proposal was confirmed for the state's November ballot, Newsom called for a nationwide tax on billionaires and "a new social contract," dubbing it an "economic reset." But in a  Substack post accompanying the video, the governor said he opposed a tax on billionaires in California.

I have two words for Newsom: You first.

It's the height of hypocrisy for Newsom to publicly push a billionaire tax for the rest of the country while opposing one in his own state. It shows he's willing to shape-shift his beliefs to fit his political goals ‒ courting Democrats nationally with one policy while protecting his own power at home by rejecting it. And it shows something else: He knows exactly how devastating a billionaire tax would be to the wealthy. That's the only reason he's fighting one in California.

Newsom's disingenuous war on billionaires

A nationwide billionaire tax is a terrible idea. That didn't stop Newsom from making his case for one anyway. In the video, California's governor-turned-presidential-hopeful claimed that 10% of people in this........

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