Sen. John Fetterman rebuked Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat, over a tweet mocking conservative personality Nick Shirley over his claims about millions of dollars of fraud in California.
Shirley’s latest film, “I Exposed California’s Billion Dollar Fraud Crisis,” alleges that operators of daycare centers, hospices, and nursing homes in California are engaged in widespread fraud, billing the state for services they are not providing.
Responding, Gov. Newsom posted an AI image of a pallid, ghoulish-looking Shirley on his press office account on X (Twitter), in which the subject is seen leering in the doorway of a kindergarten, festooned with cameras, and asking a teacher: “Hey, can I see your kids?”
While Democrats have largely cheered the governor’s efforts to satirize President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement online over the last year, Sen. Fetterman expressed offense at the Shirley caricature.
“Why can’t you celebrate any journalist or any activist doing that?” he asked during a Wednesday interview with David Friedberg for the All-In podcast.
“And Governor Newsom put out a disgusting video implying that he’s a pedophile or he’s that… Why? That’s kind of a smear. You want to disagree, but to imply that someone in one of the most gross kinds of terms like that – it’s like, hey, shouldn’t we agree, eliminate all the waste? If it exists under my purview let’s eliminate it, let’s call that what it is.”
Fetterman continued: “You should be angry. Fraud can happen on both sides, but when it’s identified, I don’t care if it’s in a Democratic state. We should all just acknowledge maybe there is a problem here.”
The senator, who represents a crucial swing state, has emerged as a wildcard since the second Trump administration began, raising eyebrows by reaching across the aisle to approve some of the president’s more contentious Cabinet nominees and joining Truth Social as part of a pitch to fund common ground with MAGA voters.
Speaking to Trace Gallagher on Fox News Wednesday, Shirley himself – sporting a “Where Did My Tax $$$ Go?” hoodie – said: “It’s really bad, it could be in the billions, in the hundreds of billions, it could be 500 billion, who really knows how bad the fraud is?”
Gallagher attacked Newsom for responding to the concerns raised by Shirley with memes, while the latter said, “The governor of California is an enemy to the people of California.
“He’s literally working to support the fraudsters; meanwhile, he could be working to expose the fraud. I mean, how stupid do you have to be to say, ‘OK, let’s go after the guy who’s exposing the fraud, let’s not go after the fraudsters.’ That is what he’s doing.
He continued: “These tax dollars don’t say right or left on them. They don’t say Republican or Democrat. Each tax dollar is a dollar for the American people and when they go in and steal these dollars from us, they’re not robbing, they’re not robbing the liberal Democrat in California, they’re robbing everyone.
“And then the governor gets mad at the person exposing the fraud? How crazy do you have to be to think with that logic?”
Shirley made waves at the turn of the year when he released a similar video entitled “I Investigated Minnesota’s Billion Dollar Fraud Scandal,” in which he accused the state’s Somali-American community of misappropriating “upwards of $100 million” in taxpayer funds by running bogus daycare centers.
It was viewed millions of times on YouTube and retweeted by Vice President JD Vance and FBI Director Kash Patel.
Outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem duly announced that agents from her department were conducting “door-to-door” raids in response to the report, a step that proved to be a prelude to the disastrous Operation Metro Surge.
The swarm of federal immigration agents into Minneapolis attracted fierce protests that ultimately saw two local activists shot dead in January, causing a public outcry, the mission to be wound down, and, ultimately, Noem to be removed as secretary earlier this month.
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