Newsom: I skipped climate summit after kids ‘had an intervention’
November 11, 2021
Gov. Gavin Newsom offered an explanation Tuesday for why he abruptly dropped his plans to attend the U.N. climate conference in Scotland: His children staged "an intervention" and begged him to remain home for Halloween.
“I had to cancel that trip,” Newsom said at an economic summit in Monterey.
Newsom addressed the topic in his first official public appearance since late October and as speculation about his unusually low profile grew increasingly intense. He said he had been “on this damn treadmill,” grappling with natural disasters, beating back a recall campaign and then choosing whether to sign or veto hundreds of bills ahead of his planned departure for Scotland.
“I was ready to go, and I had that dinner — a lot of you know this dinner — with the family, and the kids literally, they kind of had an intervention, they said they couldn’t believe I that was going to miss Halloween,” said Newsom, who has four children.
“I woke up that next morning with something probably familiar to a lot of parents, that knot in your stomach, that I had no damn choice. I had to cancel that trip,” Newsom continued.
Newsom’s office was initially tight-lipped about the sudden reversal of the governor's plans to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, citing only “family obligations.” A large delegation of California lawmakers and administration officials have made the trip.
The governor largely receded from public view for nearly two weeks, although he did post a video of himself celebrating Halloween with his family. First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom stoked more rumors with a Sunday tweet telling people questioning Newsom’s absence to “please stop hating and get a life.”
Newsom’s office said on Monday that he had been working at the Capitol. He also attended an opulent wedding for Ivy Getty, a member of a wealthy family whose patriarch Gordon has long supported Newsom’s political career.
Source: https://www.politico.com/
