California Governor Gavin Newsom appeared inside a restaurant in a county that is prohibited from entering, but the governor’s office has said he has not eaten at the restaurant.
He was there to meet the restaurant’s owners, who were receiving a grant, Newsom spokesman Daniel Lopez told Fox News.
Newsom posted a video to his TikTok account with celebrity George Lopez, telling where to look for the suitability of the coronavirus vaccine. Newsom and Lopez were in Fresno, California, sitting at Los Amigos restaurant.
A separate video of Lopez was posted on the Facebook page of restaurant Los Amigos. Lopez approved of the restaurant’s food.
Fresno is in the most restrictive purple layer, making indoor dining impossible.
In early November, Newsom was spotted dining at the chic French Laundry in Napa for a longtime consultant’s birthday. Indoor dining was not open to the public in Napa. Newsom received a bitter backlash for the outing, which he later called “a mistake.”
“I should have got up and … driven back to my house … The spirit of what I preach all the time was contradicted,” he said. “I have to preach and practice, not just preach.”
Newsom said in his apology that he wanted to “internalize” his mistake because he feared it would undermine the message of safety he wanted to send to residents.
“I try my best every day to model better behavior,” he said.
The French laundry outing helped spark a recall that is gaining traction in California. Organizers of the Newsom recall say they have collected 1,825 million signatures. They require 1.5 million signatures on March 17, but account for a fraction of the signatures to be rejected.
Newsom’s competitor was allowed to succeed the recall race, Kevin Faulconer, hit the governor for even showing up at a restaurant when others in the county were not allowed to.
“Gavin Newsom continues to show that he is nothing but an incompetent elitist who cares less about California families,” John Burke, Kevin Faulconer’s communications director for Governor, said in a statement to Fox News. Its failures have paralyzed the economy of our state and turned the lives of millions of families upside down. We’re going to call him back and begin a California comeback to get our state on track. ”