DAVOS, Switzerland \u2014 Gov. Gavin Newsom emphatically rejected the idea that California is a liability for Democrats wooing voters with an alternative to President Donald Trump\u2019s America.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Appearing onstage (opens in new tab)<\/a> Thursday during the World Economic Forum\u2019s annual meeting in Davos, Newsom said, \u201cI\u2019m proud of my state\u201d and ticked off a list of statistics, including the percentage of global research and development located in California. It\u2019s a potential preview of his strategy should he run for president, as is expected, for rebuffing critiques of California as an out-of-touch liberal la-la land with ineffective governance.<\/p>\n Trump and his allies have portrayed Newsom as a pretty boy from a failing state \u2014 U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday in Davos that Newsom \u201cstrikes me as Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken (opens in new tab)<\/a>,\u201d referring to the fictional serial killer from \u201cAmerican Psycho\u201d and Barbie\u2019s hunky counterpart. \u201cHe is too smug, too self-absorbed, and too economically illiterate to know anything.\u201d And some analysts have noted that Newsom\u2019s chances as a presidential candidate could ultimately come down to a referendum on how U.S. voters feel about California.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re in the midst of an enormous economic boom right now, and yet the state is on one hand running deficits and, on the other, not always delivering services \u2014 from education to healthcare \u2014 that your citizens are delighted with,\u201d Ben Smith, Semafor\u2019s editor-in-chief, said during the onstage interview with Newsom. \u201cHow are voters looking at California, looking at New York, looking at Chicago, supposed to say, \u2018Yeah, this is the model that we want\u2019?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have more Fortune 500 companies than any other state in America,\u201d replied Newsom. \u201cMore scientists, engineers, more Nobel laureates in my state than any state in America, the finest system of higher public education in the world. We have 18% of the world\u2019s R&D \u2014 China, 22%; Germany, 21%; California, 18% of the world\u2019s R&D. We\u2019re the center of the universe as it relates to AI.\u201d<\/p>\n Many California CEOs were indeed represented in Davos, including Apple\u2019s Tim Cook, Nvidia\u2019s Jensen Huang, Anthropic\u2019s Dario Amodei, and Uber\u2019s Dara Khosrowshahi.<\/p>\n Newsom said not enough U.S. leaders are standing up to Trump, who addressed Davos attendees Wednesday. \u201cWe can lose our republic as we know it,\u201d said Newsom. \u201cIt\u2019s why I came here to Davos, to call it out.\u201d<\/p>\n Newsom on Wednesday was blocked from speaking (opens in new tab)<\/a> at the USA House pavilion in Davos. \u201cCalifornia was just denied at the USA House. Last we checked, California is part of USA,\u201d Newsom wrote on X (opens in new tab)<\/a>. His office said (opens in new tab)<\/a> pressure from the White House and the State Department led to the cancellation of his appearance at a fireside chat hosted by Fortune magazine.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DAVOS, Switzerland \u2014 Gov. Gavin Newsom emphatically rejected the idea that California is a liability for Democrats wooing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,536,383,457,36094],"class_list":{"0":"post-144969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-economy","13":"tag-gavin-newsom","14":"tag-trump-vs-california"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}