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from Jeanne KuangCalMatters
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Gov. Gavin Newsom accused the White House of blocking a magazine interview at the official US venue for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a day after Newsom criticized European leaders for not pushing back harder against President Donald Trump.
The incident marks another escalation in the governor’s longstanding feud with Trump and his administration. Newsom and the president have not spoken since Trump deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles last summer. During a winter visit to Washington to renew his request for wildfire recovery aid, Newsom complained that the administration had refused to grant a meeting.
Newsom was scheduled to be interviewed in Davos on Wednesday night by Fortune magazine at the US House, a privately funded venue outside the forum that serves as a base for US executives and officials. Backers of the venue include Microsoft and McKinsey, according to Financial Times.
The U.S. State Department is an official partner of the event, and many Trump administration officials have spoken there during the conference, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, who on Wednesday criticized Newsom and his planned appearance, calling the governor “economically illiterate” and saying “he doesn’t speak” at the venue.
A spokesman for the governor said U.S. House organizers told Newsom’s office Wednesday afternoon they were canceling the interview and barring Newsom from speaking to the press there. Instead, Newsom was invited to attend a reception later that evening without the press, according to his office. He is still scheduled to speak to the Semafor news outlet at the official economic forum on Thursday morning.
On social media, Newsom accused organizers of bowing to “pressure from the White House and the State Department.”
“How weak and pathetic do you have to be to be so afraid of a fireside chat?” he wrote.
Reached for comment, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly wrote in an email that “no one in Davos knows” who Newsom is, calling him a “third-rate governor” who was “wandering around Switzerland instead of fixing the many problems he created in California.”
Fortune Media spokesman Patrick Reilly confirmed that the magazine’s staff had invited Newsom to the US House event and had not made a decision to cancel his appearance. Riley said the journal plans its lecture events independently, but “logistics, security and other access considerations” often influence the lineup during prominent international events.
“The US House has decided that it will not be able to accept the governor’s participation and has communicated that decision to Fortune,” Riley wrote in an email.
The governor used his trip to Davos to present California as a counterweight to Trump’s climate and economic policies. Earlier this week, Newsom announced that the state had surpassed 2.5 million purchases of zero-emission electric vehiclesa market he has often said Trump is ceding to China by abandoning clean energy.
On Tuesday, he pressed European leaders to stand up to Trump as the president increasingly talked about trying to annex Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory. On Wednesday, during Trump’s own speech at the forum, the president mentioned Newsom by name. Newsom can be seen on video laughing and sighing as the president touts his aggressive immigration crackdown in blue states.
“If I was a Democratic governor or whatever,” Trump said, “I would call Trump and say, ‘Come in, make us look good.’
This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.