Governor Gavin Newsom last week followed tens of thousands of Californians who moved to Tennessee and South Carolina. Unlike many of our friends and neighbors, the governor returned.

Outside of Nashville, Newsom attempted to bro-wash his image on the incredibly popular right-of-center podcast The Shawn Ryan Show hosted by a former Navy SEAL. Shawn Ryan has been criticized for even platforming Newsom, but that’s unfair.

Our nation is arguably helped when Newsom’s most unbelievable and pathological tendencies are on full public display.

Ryan opened the show by giving Newsom a “California-compliant” handgun. Newsom accepted the weapon and then asserted that he is “not anti-gun at all,” a “great” skeet shooter, and primarily a “bow hunter.”

Despite his stated enthusiasm for guns, this was the first gun Newsom, at 56, has owned.

Over just the next 15 minutes, Newsom brazenly misrepresented his 2020/2021 governance. Californians remember those years as a time when he abused his executive emergency powers by locking down his state longer than any other American governor and faced a recall.

When Ryan asked what mistakes he made during those years, Newsom eventually said, “We realized then, after the fact, what, what the hell are we doing? Shutting down the beaches and open areas!”

Unlike Newsom, many of us knew – and publicly said in the moment – that shutting down open spaces in response to an airborne virus was asinine and dangerous. But Newsom’s over-reliance on political science over actual science doomed us.

Other COVID-era mistakes he could have discussed but didn’t: extended mask mandates; vaccine mandates; school closures beyond any reasonable measure while his kids attended an open, private school; a $1.4 billion-dollar no-bid contract for defective masks from China; shutting down churches while allowing dispensaries, Home Depots, and strip clubs to remain open; and allowed criminals to steal over $30 billion from the state’s unemployment fund.

Over the ensuing four-hour interview, Newsom declared that the “California exodus is a myth,” claiming that California’s population is surging again. The truth? California has lost more people domestically to other states than it has gained in every single year that Newsom has been governor. Its population growth is tied entirely to international immigration, both legal and illegal. Yet, even with those sources of growth, California has grown by only 50,000 people since Newsom came into office. Texas and Florida, governed by Newsom’s nemeses, have grown about two million each.

Newsom also claimed victory over homelessness by pointing out that the state’s “unsheltered homeless” grew by only 0.4% last year. What he didn’t say is that total homelessness grew by 3.1%, that California, with just 12% of the nation’s population, hosts 24% of the nation’s homelessness — and that roughly half of America’s unsheltered homeless are in California. He instead attributed all homelessness failures on local cities and counties despite previously designating himself “California’s homeless czar.”

Newsom yet again agreed that it’s “unfair” to allow boys to compete in girls’ sports, but pointed to absolutely nothing his administration has done to defend women and girls advocating for their spaces. Well, not entirely nothing.

What we know, but Ryan couldn’t have known, is that Newsom chose silence while Democratic Assemblyman Richard Zbur compared those women and girls to Nazis.

Those of us who have lived through Newsom’s reign will be left wondering if he believed every lie and half-truth he told to Ryan, or if he hopes that the nation will believe if he tries just hard enough.

As Texas Governor Greg Abbott says often to the two million people who moved to his state from California, Newsom’s approach is all hat and no cattle.

Will O’Neill is chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County and served twice as m2ayor of Newport Beach, including in 2020.