(Daily Signal)—“Governor Newsom, who strikes me as Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken, may be the only Californian who knows less about economics than Kamala Harris.”
That was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, delivering a remarkably on-point put-down of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
And the put-down was warranted, given that Newsom was hopping from camera to camera at the conference, painting himself as the leader of the American resistance against the American president, and generally acting the fool.
I always thought Newsom looked like how the Devil’s lawyer would be portrayed in a movie, but a mix of the main villain from “American Psycho” and Barbie’s boyfriend certainly seems spot on.
Aside from Bessent’s barb, Newsom’s presence at Davos—where world leaders and the global elite generally gather to out-smug each other—didn’t do him any favors.
Somehow, in an environment that seems perfectly suited to his persona, Newsom flamed out. And that flameout wasn’t just because his speech, which was clearly intended to be in the style of a post-State of the Union address partisan rebuttal, got canceled.
No, I think the reason is that his newest schtick of being the American lefty memelord who is totally not running for president ran into the larger political forces at play. Newsom clearly wanted to present himself as the champion of the great global “liberal international order” empire fighting those mean nationalistic bullies like Russia and the United States.
But Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered what was almost certainly the best address representing that view. And while Carney’s speech was wrong on much of its substance—President Donald Trump certainly had some harsh and apt criticism—it was at least serious and credible.
Not so with Newsom, who just seemed eager to please cameras while making strange analogies and telling crude inside jokes about how world leaders are “selling out” to Trump, which didn’t land.
What made this “selling out” joke even more ridiculous is that Newsom decided it was the right idea to take a minute to pose for a picture with leftist billionaire megadonor Alex Soros while he was there.
Again, not great.
Some may say that Trump often creates a spectacle, that he’s not above trolling, and that Newsom is just acting in response. But Trump is the president and he’s actually getting things done on the world stage. Even the Greenland brouhaha that caused so much angst throughout Europe seems to have ended up as a deal that’s good for the U.S. and our allies.
In other words, there is a purpose to what Trump says in line with the administration’s foreign policy goals.
Newsom isn’t the president and he certainly doesn’t have any power over U.S. foreign policy. He’s just a state governor. Instead of being crowned the head of the global resistance to Trump, he just came off looking like an anti-American punk.
Stephen A. Smith, the sports commentator turned political commentator, likely echoed the sentiments of many when he lambasted Newsom for criticizing Trump and America on foreign soil.
“Our problems are our problems. But we ain’t taking dirty laundry outside,” Smith said on his SiriusXM show. “You don’t go on a world stage to disrespect your own house, which is the United States of America. I don’t like that at all, not even a little bit.”
And the optics issue doesn’t even get to the bigger question about Newsom and Davos. What exactly was a state governor doing there at all?
California seems to be having a lot of problems. Shouldn’t Newsom be at home fixing those? He should at least refrain from delivering a moral lecture to the world about how Trump and his administration are so awful when his own state is so dysfunctional and frequently tyrannical, right?
While the Democrat Party is quite farcically pivoting to the idea that it’s all about “affordability,” California is practically the poster child of a runaway cost of living. In the Golden State, pretty much nothing is affordable thanks to Newsom’s policies. Meanwhile, the California governor is yucking it up with global elites about how proud he is to be giving taxpayer-funded health care to illegal aliens.
Even some writers at The Atlantic had to concede this week that Newsom’s record on economics is a bad look—and on cultural issues an even worse look—if he ever intends to win over a national audience.
“California’s affordability problems are dire, but Newsom’s greatest vulnerabilities may be cultural issues,” wrote Marc Novicoff and Jonathan Chait. “His tenure has seen the state fall hard for faddish progressive policies on immigration, education, and crime that either didn’t work, violated the intuitions of most Americans, or both.”
Oof.
Now, Newsom could go back to California and start trying to clean up the mess, maybe do a little more to help the Palisades that burned down, or maybe try to curtail homelessness that he promised to fix decades ago, or perhaps even work to ensure that men don’t play in woman’s sports in his state given that he once called it “unfair.”
But as always with Newsom, you shouldn’t take him literally or seriously. Hopefully, a few more people learned that after his Davos debacle.
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