Gov. Newsom pulls a Karen when Target employee blames him to his face for shoplifting epidemic: 'Where's your manager?'

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) admitted on Wednesday that he once asked for a Target employee's manager because that employee blamed him for the shoplifting epidemic.

Speaking on a Zoom meeting with California mayors, Newsom recounted what he called "my Target story." One time while in a Target checkout line, Newsom said he witnessed a man leave the store without paying for merchandise. When he confronted a Target employee about the incident, that employee blamed him.

"I said, 'Why didn't you stop him?' She goes, 'Oh, the governor.' Swear to God, true story, on my mom's grave. 'The governor lowered the threshold, there's no accountability,'" Newsom recalled.

"I said that's just not true. I said we have the tenth-toughest — $950 — the tenth-toughest in America," he continued. "She said, 'Well, we don't stop them because of the governor.'"

The employee, Newsom explained, eventually realized she was speaking with the very person whom she had blamed. Newsom alleged the employee then asked him for a photograph, but he denied the request. He explained:

I’m like, "No, I'm not taking a photo, we’re having a conversation. Where's your manager? How are you blaming the governor?" And it was, you know, $380 later, and I was like, “Why am I spending $380 when everyone can walk the hell right out?"

It's true that Newsom isn't directly to blame for California's epidemic of organized retail theft.

But Newsom, as recently as December 2021, publicly defended Proposition 47, a law passed in 2014 that reduced some non-violent crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. For shoplifting specifically, stealing goods with a property value below $950 was recategorized as a misdemeanor.

After Prop 47 passed, California experienced an increase in non-violent crimes like shoplifting and larceny. And when California cities began electing far-left prosecutors with aversions to prosecuting low-level offenders, shoplifting went relatively unchecked and allowed organized retail theft to flourish.

To his credit, Newom is now trying to mitigate some of the problems Prop 47 has caused, but he has stopped short of asking voters to reconsider the law.

Still, the irony is rich. California Democrats for years supported lowering the penalties for low-level crimes likes shoplifting. But when they witness such crimes or become victims of crime themselves, suddenly it becomes a real-life problem for them.

"Shoutout to this store clerk for saying to the governor’s face what every Californian has wanted to say: that he and his radical @CA_Dem buddies are to blame for CA’s surging crime," said California Republican Party Chair Jessica Millan Patterson.

"Sadly, Newsom still didn’t seem to take the hint," she added.

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