California Gov. Gavin Newsom told CNN that shutting down the state's beaches during the pandemic was "insane in hindsight," setting off a wave of online fury from critics who say they warned him at the time.
In an interview with CNN anchor Jake Tapper released September 15, the Democratic governor sat fly-fishing in a Montana river and reflected on his pandemic-era decisions. Tapper asked what Newsom would have done differently. Newsom's answer amounted to a partial concession, one that his critics say arrived years too late and with far too little accountability attached.
Newsom told Tapper:
"The idea that we closed beaches was insane in hindsight."
He also acknowledged that some of California's largest public school systems stayed closed longer than they should have. And he offered a qualifier that did little to calm the backlash:
"Look, everyone's a genius in hindsight, so, you know, coulda, woulda."
That framing, mistakes were made, but who could have known?, is precisely what enraged the people who did know, said so publicly, and were ignored or punished for it.
On March 19, 2020, California became the first state in the nation to issue a statewide stay-at-home order, covering nearly 40 million residents. The state required masks, closed beaches, shuttered businesses, and threatened to cut funding to cities that refused to enforce the restrictions.
California was also among the last states to resume full-time, in-person learning. Newsom did not name specific school districts in the interview, but his admission that large systems stayed closed too long tracks with a record that kept millions of children out of classrooms well after other states had reopened.
Then came November 2020. While Californians lived under the restrictions Newsom imposed, the governor attended an upscale dinner, a contradiction that fueled a recall effort. Newsom faced a recall election in 2021 and survived it, but the episode crystallized a complaint that dogged him throughout the pandemic: the rules applied to everyone except the people who wrote them.
The online response to Newsom's CNN interview was swift and pointed. Several public figures posted on X, and the common thread was simple: this was not a hindsight problem. It was obvious at the time.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon posted a direct challenge to the governor:
"Remember when I sued you in both state and federal court to open the beaches of Orange County that you maliciously closed, and you lifted the order so as to moot our cases before the hearings? You knew it back then too, Governor."
Dhillon's claim, that Newsom reversed the beach closures specifically to avoid an unfavorable court ruling, has not been independently confirmed, but it points to a pattern critics have identified: the governor adjusting policy not because the science changed, but because the legal or political pressure became too great.
Spencer Pratt, the Republican former Los Angeles mayoral candidate, rejected Newsom's "hindsight" framing outright:
"No, Gavin. It was insane then. We all told you it was insane then. You knew it was insane then."
Benny Johnson, host of "The Benny Show," connected Newsom's concession to what he sees as the governor's broader political calculation:
"Gavin Newsom had a man arrested for paddleboarding alone because apparently that put him at risk of getting COVID. He filled skate parks with sand, forced masks on your kids, made you show a vaccine card to go anywhere in public. Now he admits it was 'insane' six years later because he thinks he's going to be president. America hasn't forgotten."
Johnson's specific claims, the paddleboarding arrest, the sand-filled skate parks, are not independently verified in the reporting, but they echo widely circulated stories from the pandemic era that became symbols of government overreach in California. His broader point is harder to dismiss: Newsom's admission arrives at a moment when he is widely seen as positioning himself for a future national run.
Comedian Adam Carolla offered a blunter assessment:
"You are a sea captain who ran his tanker into the rocks, and now we can have a laugh as you explain that you didn't know anything back then and that now you would like to be in charge of the fleet."
Fox News political analyst Guy Benson kept his response to four words: "Not just in hindsight!"
RealClearPolitics political correspondent Susan Crabtree raised a point that cut deeper than the closures themselves, the selective enforcement that accompanied them:
"What was insane was closing beach parking lots but allowing, even permitting, BLM protests in the same parking lots. It was also insane to see state beaches closed but city beaches right next door open and crammed with people. I'll never forget that one."
Crabtree's observation highlights what many Californians experienced firsthand: a patchwork of rules that seemed to shift based on political preference rather than public health logic. State beaches sat empty while city-managed beaches next door overflowed. Parking lots closed to families reopened for protest gatherings. The message was clear, some activities were essential and others were not, and the distinction had little to do with viral transmission.
Newsom's interview also touched on the early pandemic response more broadly. He described the initial period as one in which people treated COVID like what the article characterized as a "Purell-based crisis", focused on hand sanitizer shortages and price gouging rather than the virus itself. That framing spreads the blame across the entire country, but it does not answer the specific question of why California's restrictions lasted longer and reached further than most other states.
Newsom is not the only prominent figure facing renewed scrutiny over pandemic-era choices. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who served as medical advisor to several presidents, invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times when asked about the government's COVID response during testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in July.
Fauci's refusal to answer and Newsom's belated admission sit on opposite ends of the same problem. One declines to discuss what happened. The other acknowledges it went wrong but frames the failure as something no one could have foreseen, despite the contemporaneous objections of lawyers, parents, business owners, and ordinary citizens who said exactly what Newsom is saying now, years before he said it.
Fox News Digital reached out to the California governor's office for comment on the backlash. No response was included in the reporting.
Newsom was elected governor in 2018. He survived the 2021 recall. His pandemic record remains the defining feature of his tenure, and his own words now confirm what millions of Californians lived through was, by his own standard, unreasonable.
Calling it "insane in hindsight" is a start. But hindsight is a luxury the families who lost businesses, the children who lost years of schooling, and the man allegedly arrested for paddleboarding alone never had. They had to live with the consequences in real time, while the governor dined out.
