Gavin Newsom sure loves to talk a big game. But courage is something to show, not tell.
His trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is the latest example of the governor making a fool of himself by not knowing the difference.
Davos is Newsom’s favorite kind of place, a swanky gathering where he can run his mouth about anything and everything but how he governs California.
So, he was thrilled to be asked by a reporter what he would tell Europeans about Donald Trump’s blustering campaign to squeeze Greenland out of Denmark.
Newsom got on his high horse: “It’s time to buck up, it’s time to get serious and stop being complicit. It’s time to stand tall and firm and have a backbone. I can’t take this complicity, people rolling over. I should have brought a bunch of kneepads for all the world leaders. I mean, handing out crowns, handing out Nobel Prizes — it’s just pathetic.”
Of course, Newsom shared this with his followers on X, adding, “Get off your knees and grow a spine.”
If you want to criticize the president of the United States, it’s a free country — but have the decency and the guts to do it here at home, not for applause from foreigners, and certainly not for the purpose of soliciting foreign opposition to America.
Memo to Newsom: Foreign leaders act in their own interests. They say and do things that either advance their country’s interest or their own political futures.
If they are cozying up to the United States, that’s a good thing, and anybody who wants to be our president someday (as Newsom so desperately does) should not get in the way of that.
It’s not just silly to be mad that world leaders don’t openly hate Trump — it’s bad politics. American voters don’t like other countries meddling in our politics.
If Trump gets foreign leaders mad at him, that’s apt to make him more popular. It’s only bad for him politically if foreign animosity delivers bad results for America. That’s not something Newsom should want for his country.
Newsom isn’t just clowning and trolling on the world stage instead of acting like a leader. He’s also doing that thing again where he tells his current audience whatever they want to hear. But that is likely to give him political trouble down the road.
He’s been notorious for this as governor, promising different things to different factions in private meetings and then changing his tune in public. He’s rolled over many times for progressive zealots, and taken victory laps for his speeches instead of rolling up his sleeves to get things done, such as rebuilding after the Palisades fire.
After the 2024 election, he told Charlie Kirk that men in women’s sports was “deeply unfair.” A year later, he told Ezra Klein, “There’s no governor who has signed more pro-trans legislation than I have.” Whatever his audience wanted to hear.
Newsom’s social-media account called ICE operations “state-sponsored terrorism.” When confronted by Ben Shapiro, who told him, “Our ICE officers obviously are not terrorists,” Newsom threw his own tweets under the bus: “Yeah, I think that’s fair.”
Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty’s 2012 presidential campaign famously collapsed after he wouldn’t defend on the debate stage attacks he’d made in ads against Mitt Romney.
Something similar happened to Kamala Harris in 2019 when she backed off criticisms of Joe Biden face-to-face. Newsom won’t get very far running for president if he can only act brave when he’s in front of a friendly audience.
It’s also a bad way to lead.
Franklin Pierce was so infamous among his fellow Democrats for telling listeners what they wanted to hear that when Stephen Douglas and Jefferson Davis got him to support the pro-slavery Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, they had the president write out the bill’s language in his own hand to make sure he couldn’t back out.
The law ended up nearly destroying Pierce’s party and driving the country into the Civil War. But at least it saved Pierce from arguing with his friends.
Instead of working blue with talk of kneepads and giving lectures on getting a spine, Newsom should try sticking up for his own country abroad — and sticking to his guns at home.
Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review.
The post Why Gavin Newsom demands the world’s elites oppose America appeared first on New York Post.
