US Politics
Gavin Newsom blasts president in Davos and hails social media attacks
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom has claimed he “lives rent-free” in President Donald Trump’s head and hailed the success of his social media attacks on the commander-in-chief.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, hours after Trump addressed the event on his demands for Greenland, the Democrat did not hold back.
“This is not normal, it’s a deviation of normalcy,” he told Semafor’s editor-in-chief Ben Smith during an on-stage interview. “We’ve got to call it out. So I put a mirror up to Trump and Trumpism – in all caps.”
Newsom was alluding to his official press office account on X (Twitter), which has been given over in the last year to savage satires of Trump and his cabinet and wry commentary on their activities.
“And it was ironic because Pravda, Fox News in America, others, they got offended by it,” he continued.
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“They said, ‘Well, where’s his mother to wash his mouth out with soap?’ I said, ‘Where the hell have you been? You’ve never said a word about Trump dressing up as the Pope, tweeting out and cosplaying on the world stage.’”
Newsom went on to rebuke Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for describing him in Davos a day earlier as: “Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken.”
“The Treasury Secretary talked about a Barbie doll,” the governor responded. “It was as if he was reading a diary and had just broken up with someone. I mean that was the Secretary of the Treasury using valuable time yesterday on the world stage.
“We’re deeply in their head, I think the affordability agenda appears to be, I’m living rent-free in Trump’s head.”
Newsom was taking part after an earlier event hosted by Fortune at U.S.A. House, his country’s official headquarters at the gathering, was abruptly canceled, which the governor blamed on pressure from the White House and State Department.
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During his sitdown with Smith, Newsom claimed the development was “consistent with the administration and its authoritarian tendencies,” also attacking the aborted event’s corporate sponsors for being “complicit” with the president’s agenda and accusing them of “selling out.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, the governor attacked the incursion of ICE agents into his state last year, mocking Customs and Border Protection official Greg Bovino for dressing “as if he literally went on eBay and purchased SS garb,” and warning that America is living under “the rule of Don” and a “supine Congress” as its enters the 250th anniversary year of its founding.
He described watching speeches at the Forum by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and lamenting the loss of respect towards the U.S. because of Trump, observing: “That used to be us.”
Not done there, he characterized the president as an “invasive species” devoted to personal enrichment who had left him with little choice but to “fight fire with fire,” for instance by supporting redistricting legislation in California to counteract Republican gerrymandering in Texas.
He did not spare his own party either, claiming that the typical reaction of Democrats to Trump’s outrages could be summed up as: “We might write an op-ed.”