Newsom: Back and Forth With Trump Is ‘Deeply Unbecoming’

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said on Thursday that his approach of trading insults with Donald Trump and his administration was inappropriate but necessary.

“It’s deeply unbecoming, come on, of course it is. It’s not what we should be doing,” Newsom said in a Q&A session one day after, according to the governor’s office, he was denied entry to “USA House,” the official US pavilion at the gathering of political and economic leaders, where he was supposed to hold an event with the media. “But you’ve got to point out the absurdity. You’ve got to put a mirror up to this.”

Newsom is an early favorite for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination in large part because of a social media campaign that mocks Trump’s erratic and outrageous behavior.

“We decided that the only way to address Trump is literally to fight fire with fire,” he said.

That combativeness not only applies to Newsom’s social media accounts. He fought (and defeated) Trump in the courts over the deployment of the National Guard in California and launched a redistricting initiative that counteracted the president’s ploy to gain five Republican congressional seats in Texas through mid-decade gerrymandering.

Therefore, it is hardly surprising that he is polling so well right now. Newsom is giving the Democratic base what it wants: someone who fights back. And, true to that persona, his appearance in Davos was confrontational, a bit vulgar, and sprinkled with made-for-social media soundbites.

For example, he blasted Trump’s corruption and pointed out that the president enriched himself to the tune of more than $1 billion in the first year of his second term.

Newsom also weighed in on the main topic of the Davos meeting: Trump’s threats to the European Union and NATO. Noting that it took decades of trust to build these types of alliances, the governor pointed out that it takes someone like Trump much less time to undermine all of that hard work.

However, Newsom also said he does not believe that the damage the president is doing to the US is necessarily permanent. In that assessment, he disagreed with Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, who had used the signature speech of the Davos meeting to launch a blistering attack on Trump for causing a rupture in the old world order.

While praising Carney for speaking out, Newsom said he believes these relationships and alliances may be in dormancy but they are not dead, in spite of the US president’s efforts to destroy them.

And, he added, Trump’s actions are not the power plays his supporters believe them to be.

“Destruction is not strength,” he said. “The Trump administration is weakness masquerading as strength.”

Newsom’s performance in Davos, where he is the only Democrat making headlines, will get him some attention and contribute to his name recognition, which is the most important currency in these early polls.

However, he is also putting a target on his back.

In his remarks, the governor pointed out that he isn’t naïve about the fact that Trump is weaponizing the Department of Justice to go after his perceived enemies, such as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D).

“These guys are going to try to take me down, not just my state,” Newsom said.

Ultimately, though, he believes that the only way to respond to Trump is by standing up to him.

“[The president] susses out weakness like no one else,” the governor said. “That’s his great strength. That’s his gift. But you punch back, you fight fire with fire, you display conviction and strength, [then] it’s a different relationship.”