‘Father of the Year’: Newsom Quit Climate Summit to Go Trick-or-Treating

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) claimed Tuesday in his first public appearance since Oct. 27 that he had canceled plans to attend the Glasgow climate summit because his children demanded that he go trick-or-treating with them on Halloween.

Newsom, speaking at the California Economic Summit, complained about the “treadmill” of work — just weeks after voters tried to relieve him of the burdens of office in a recall election that he managed to defeat by the same margin as his 2018 win.

As Fox News reported:

“It’s been a hell of a couple years for all of us, for each and every one of you, particularly parents,” he said. “The fits and starts at school, the stresses of balancing your responsibilities at work and also your responsibilities at home. And I extend those responsibilities particularly to fathers, that may not be doing as much, let’s be honest, as the moms have been doing these last few years.”

I’ve been on this damn treadmill,” he continued. “We’ve gone from crisis to crisis, from wildfires and extremes, from droughts and social justice and unrest, obviously with COVID, this recall you may have read about.”

Newsom said he was out to dinner with his family when his children held an “intervention” because they “couldn’t believe I was going to miss Halloween.” He ultimately decided to stay home because the “knot” in his stomach was too much to bear.

“I had no damn choice, I had to cancel that trip,” he said.

Since then, he claimed, he had been treated as “Father of the Year” by his family.

Halloween was ten days ago; the climate conference is still ongoing. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg left Monday to attend it: he, too, was mysteriously absent from public view, until he surfaced two months later, saying he had been on paternity leave.

In addition to family, Newsom claims he has devoted the past two weeks to work — though he spent Saturday at the lavish wedding of billionaire oil heiress Ivy Getty, with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) officiating the nuptial vows.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.