“The Federalist” editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway on “Jesse Watters Primetime” reacts to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest antics and said Democrats will keep losing because they don’t understand the appeal of President Donald Trump.

BRIAN KILMEADE, GUEST HOST: Okay, couple of other things. They laughed at him, Gavin, they’re laughing at you. So do dictators hold conventions to showcase the future of the party? Because that’s what Donald Trump is doing. He’s calling for a mini RNC before the midterms. Let the fun begin. Editor-in-chief of “The Federalist,” Mollie Hemingway joins us now. Mollie, what do you take of the Gavin Newsom meltdown? It seems very theatrical. MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR: It’s very theatrical, but it lacks substance, and that’s kind of the entire problem that Democrats have right now. They look at how Donald Trump has a lot of popular appeal, Gavin Newsom has been trying to copy his communication style. He says that he’s going to be meaner. He doesn’t realize, and this is a mistake that a lot of people, critics of Trump have made, whether they’re on left and right, that people support Trump because they like the policies that he is pushing, and until Democrats figure out how to deal with that problem, that the policies that they are pushing are considered very toxic by a lot of Americans, they’re not going to have greater electoral success. KILMEADE: You know, I just want to show you the polls, though, so people will say, well, Gavin Newsom, he’s not going to make any gains. But so far in this latest poll — POLITICO that put out — Newsom on the Democratic side leads Harris 25 to 19; Mayor Pete is 13; AOC is 10; and Walz at the bottom. Can’t believe he’s even up there. So your thoughts about Newsom? He’s probably saying, wow, the Dems like me. They really like me. So I’m going to keep this up. HEMINGWAY: Well, the problem is that what it takes to win the Democrat nomination, he’s got down. He really understands that, and he should. He’s the governor of California, which is a place where a lot of the left-wing base exists, but it’s completely the opposite of what you need to have if you want to win a national election. And so he’s catering to that far left fringe of his party, the ones that will give him that nomination, and then he’s hoping that he can just pivot once he gets the nomination into being a somewhat more coherent, moderate person. The problem is he has that same issue that Kamala Harris had. In many ways, he’s just like a white male version of Kamala Harris. The policies that he has embraced throughout his career, there is tape of that, and they can play it throughout the entire campaign. KILMEADE: Yes, they also have numbers, and numbers don’t lie. For example, when he took over in 2019, the homeless population was 151,000. He said he was going to get that down. He is going to attack the homeless situation. He increased to 23 percent. The state budget, he had a surplus of $ 21 billion. Good job! Oops. I’m looking now, he is now minus 11.8 billion. Usually when you go to into a deficit from a massive surplus, that’s bad. So if you’re looking at the other side of the baseball card, he’s doing pretty terrible in terms of people leaving one of the finest states in the world. I mean, it’s got so much to offer. Everybody had a California dream. Now, it’s a tax nightmare. In 2019 they lost 208,000. Now we have — they have lost, his five years, 1.67 million, the largest exodus from the state ever. This is a terrible record. HEMINGWAY: And Brian, you think about who those people are who are leaving, it’s usually the middle class that has been just completely kicked out of California and that’s who you need to win a national election. That’s who you need in Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania. These policies have been very bad for California. He has been a vocal supporter of them throughout his career. But the one thing he does also have, he is willing to lie about it. So he is hoping that he can just lie about his record.

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