CNN’s Scott Jennings Calls California a ‘Failed State.’ It Just Became the World’s 4th Largest Economy

CNN conservative commentator Scott Jennings straight up called California a “failed state” during a hit on Tuesday night. Ironically, Jennings made the comments just weeks after new data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) revealed that California’s GDP is now greater than Japan’s – making it the world’s 4th largest economy.

“It’s amazing to me. First of all, this guy is the governor of a state, and it has got one of its most important cities burning on his watch, and he’s out here launching a presidential campaign. I mean, there’s no other way to listen to what happened and not conclude that he just launched his presidential campaign on top of this lawlessness that’s going on in California. He governs a failed state. He sits at the top of a failed state,” Jennings said, while responding to Newsom’s address regarding Trump federalizing and deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles.

“And he sits, I guess, at the leadership right now of a political party that’s wanting to coddle the illegal invasion of our country that’s causing what’s happening. It’s not particularly controversial for Donald Trump to enforce federal law, our immigration laws, and yet to Democrats and to Gavin Newsom, it’s an affront to them for the President of the United States to enforce Federal law,” Jennings continued.

Notably, Trump deploying troops to a state without the governor’s consent is something a president has not done in 60 years, since the civil rights era. Critics of Trump’s decision have pointed to LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell saying that his officers were confident they could handle the situation and contain any level of escalation.

In late April, Governor Newsom celebrated his state’s economic success. Newsom shared a screenshot at the time of a Fox Business report titled, “California overtakes Japan to become world’s 4th largest economy.” He captioned the image, writing, “Fox News loves to say that CA is doomed.”

“The truth is — CA’s economy has continued to outperform the nation. We were just named the fourth largest economy in the WORLD — outpacing Japan. Our growth rate last year outpaced the U.S., China, and Germany,” he continued, taking aim at other popular negative talking points about his state:

Our state population is increasing.

We’re #1 for new business starts, access to venture capital funding, manufacturing, and agriculture.

California isn’t just keeping pace with the world… we’re setting the pace.

The Fox Business report noted that the new “data also shows that, were California its own country, its growth rate would exceed the U.S. and any other nation in the world. The state’s nominal GDP grew at a rate of 6% in 2024, outpacing the U.S.’ 5.3% rate, China’s 2.6% rate and Germany’s 2.9% rate,” added the report. The U.S. remains the world’s largest economy, followed by China and Germany.

Watch the clip above.