‘Corrupt’ Newsom Dragged for Panera Bread Carveout

March 1st, 2024 4:44 PM

California Governor Gavin Newsom came under fire from several media outlets for apparently exempting Panera Bread from a new law imposing high minimum wage requirements on businesses. 

Newsmax host Chris Plante, Fox News host Laura Ingraham, The Washington Times opinion editor and Fox Contributor Charles Hurt and comedian and Fox News host Greg Gutfeld were among the critics and they were not kind, to say the least. On the Feb. 29 edition of Chris Plante: The Right Squad, Plante noted that California’s new $20/hour minimum wage for fast food was crafted to exempt “chains that baked bread and sell it as a standalone item,” before adding that a billionaire donor to Newsom owns several dozen Panera locations. 

Plante brutally summed up this situation, saying, “Gavin Newsom has a new campaign slogan: ‘Give me your money, and you'll be exempt from all of my ridiculous, terrible, bad policy ideas.’” Plante went after both Newsom and President Joe Biden, noting the difficult situation faced by restaurant owners in California and across the nation.  “Every other restaurant owner has the same problem, fast food or otherwise, that everything is more expensive; food is more expensive; labor is more expensive; energy is more expensive,” Plante said, before adding, “Electricity is up 27% just since Joe Biden took office. This item is about a corrupt Democrat governor, creating a carve-out for a buddy of his who is really rich and can probably afford to pay more.”

The infamous “buddy,” billionaire Greg Flynn, has given at least $164,800 to Newsom’s political campaigns, the New York Post reported.

“Like every socialist authoritarian regime, in California, some people are more equal than others,” said MRC Free Speech Vice President Dan Schneider. “Gavin Newsom and his cronies like to pretend that they care about others, while they take care of themselves and wreak the economy for others.” 

Echoing Plante’s remarks, Fox’s Ingraham criticized this “strange carveout” that benefitted a donor on the Feb. 29 edition of The Ingraham Angle. Ingraham’s guest, Fox Contributor Hurt, blasted Newsom for this exemption and for supporting this job-killing law in the first place. “There's nothing in the world more damaging to workers than raising the minimum wage like this because, of course, instead of having an $18-an-hour job, they have no job at all,” Hurt said. 

Hurt went on to blast Newsom for protecting his friend’s business from the effects of a law he supported. Hurt said, “A grease ball like Gavin Newsom comes out and makes a carve-out for his multibillionaire friend so that his multibillionaire friend can keep a few more dollars in his pocket instead of giving it to those workers that Gavin Newsom claims he cares about and claims he wants to help, but it's not going to help anyway because they're just going to lose their jobs.”

Fox’s Gutfeld mocked Newsom on the Feb. 29 edition of Gutfeld! for the carveout before hilariously exposing the governor. Gutfeld played a clip where Newsom used a phrase about questionable legislating “the sausage-making of politics” to describe the process. 

“The phrase refers to the unpleasant way in which a process is carried out behind the scenes. When someone says, ‘You don’t want to know how the sausage is made,’ it’s usually referring to something gross,” Gutfeld said.

He added: “But also it’s how politics is done. Gavin spoke the truth, when he makes sausage, he means making deals for his donor pals so they are exempt from the rules he enforces for others. It's the whole reason people like Gavin get into politics and why billionaires remain friends with people like Gavin, so they are immune from the political punishment they actually support.”

Conservatives are under attack! Contact ABC News (818-460-7477), CBS News (212-975-3247) and NBC News (212- 664-6192) and demand that it report on Gavin Newsom’s destructive policies.