California Gov. Gavin Newsom sat down with CBS News Chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett over the weekend and offered his candid assessment of the factors behind this week’s attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which left him in the hospital after being assaulted with a hammer at their San Francisco home.
“I’ve seen the dehumanization of Nancy Pelosi,” Newsom told Garrett. “I don’t think anyone’s been dehumanized like she has consistently. Now I watched this one guy, Jesse Watters or something on Fox News. What he’s been saying about Paul Pelosi the last five, six months, mocking him consistently. Don’t tell me that’s not aiding and abetting all this. Of course it is.”
About a month ago, Watters characterized the speaker’s contention that there is a shortage of workers in the U.S. and that some farmers want immigrant laborers.
“Shut up and pick my grapes,” he said on Jesse Watters Primetime. “Historically, Democrats have always been concerned about who’s picking their crops and haven’t really seen them as people. But they are, Biden and Pelosi, they are. But they don’t care. The death march that they take doesn’t matter to them. They’re servants and if they lose a few on the way, they’ll get more servants.”
Watters’ Fox News show has been winning its 7 p.m. time slot among cable news networks.
“They’re sowing the seeds, creating a culture and a climate like this,” Newsom maintained in his interview, which is set to air on CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. ET. “I mean, look online. Look at the sewage that is online that they amplify on these networks and in social media to dehumanize people like Nancy Pelosi and other political leaders.”
Watters, for his part, responded to the news of the attack on Pelosi’s husband thusly:
(Excerpt) Read more in: Deadline