The governor was in the room with business titans and world leaders on Wednesday when Trump delivered a speech in which he called Newsom “a good guy” and appeared to offer to send National Guard troops to fight crime in California.
As Trump took credit for declining crime and criticized cities with sanctuary immigration laws, cameras panned to Newsom, who laughed and shook his head.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent responded Wednesday, accusing Newsom of “hobnobbing with the global elite while his California citizens are still homeless,” and deriding the governor as “too smug, too self-absorbed and too economically illiterate to know anything.”
Bessent spoke at USA House, a privately funded venue holding events with American officials and executives, which was scheduled to host a “fireside chat” later that day between Newsom and media outlet Fortune.
The governor’s office accused the Trump administration of pressuring the venue’s organizers to cancel the event.
“I was going to speak last night … a simple conversation, discussion after Trump’s speech,” Newsom said. “They made sure that I didn’t.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks at the 56th World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 20, 2026. (Harun Ozalp/Anadolu via Getty Images)
In his conversation with Smith, Newsom discussed his transformation to becoming one of America’s leading Trump critics — a strategy of “fighting fire with fire” with memes and online jabbing that has won admiration from Democrats across the country.
Though Newsom has attended the World Economic Forum previously, he credited his pugilistic approach for capturing attention in a fractured media environment. “I was doing my 10-point plans before, and I don’t think any of you would have been here this morning had I done that,” Newsom said.
Asked whether California — where a majority of residents still believe the state is heading in the wrong direction — can be held up as a model of effective governance, Newsom responded that he is “proud of my state.”
“We have more Fortune 500 companies than any state in America, more scientists, more engineers, more Nobel laureates in my state than any state in America,” he said.
While Newsom criticized the business executives he said have failed to stand up to Trump, he also continued his public campaign against a proposed tax on billionaires that could appear on California’s November ballot.
Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a press conference at the Friendship House Association of American Indians in San Francisco on Jan. 16, 2026. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
The proposal, a one-time 5% tax on assets excluding real estate, was proposed by a health care union to raise money for safety-net programs in the wake of federal cuts.
While proponents of the measure are still collecting signatures to place the idea on the ballot, Newsom said high-income earners are already leaving the state in response. And he argued that the initiative’s focus on health care programs would leave less money for California schools.
“It’s a badly drafted initiative … that literally takes teachers and takes our educational system out of any consideration of support,” Newsom said.
