White House blocks Gavin Newsom from interview at official US venue in Davos

Gov. Gavin Newsom accused the White House of blocking a magazine interview at the official U.S. venue at 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 long-running feud with Trump and his administration. Newsom and the president have not spoken since Trump deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles last summer. During a visit to Washington in the winter to renew his request for wildfire recovery aid, Newsom complained that the administration refused to grant a meeting.

Newsom was scheduled to be interviewed in Davos on Wednesday evening by Fortune magazine at the USA House, a privately funded venue outside the forum that serves as a base for U.S. executives and officials. Venue backers include Microsoft and McKinsey, according to the Financial Times.

The U.S. State Department is an official partner of the venue, and multiple Trump administration officials have spoken there during the conference, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who on Wednesday slammed Newsom and his scheduled appearance, calling the governor “economically illiterate” and saying “he’s not speaking” at the venue.

A spokesperson for the governor said USA House organizers told Newsom’s office Wednesday afternoon that they were canceling the interview and barring Newsom from speaking with the press there. Newsom was instead invited to attend a reception later that night without the press, according to his office. He is still scheduled to speak with the news outlet Semafor at the official economic forum Thursday morning.

On social media, Newsom accused the organizers of bowing to “pressure from the White House and State Department.”

“How weak and pathetic do you have to be to be this scared of a fireside chat?” he wrote.

Asked for comment, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly wrote in an email that “no one in Davos knows” who Newsom is, calling him a “third-rate governor” who was “frolicking around Switzerland instead of fixing the many problems he created in California.”

Fortune Media spokesperson Patrick Reilly confirmed the magazine’s staff invited Newsom to its event at the USA House and did not make the decision to cancel his appearance. Reilly said the magazine schedules its speaking events independently, but “logistical, security and other access considerations” often affect the lineup during prominent international events.

“USA House determined it would not be able to accommodate the governor’s participation and communicated that decision to Fortune,” Reilly wrote in an email.

The governor has been using his trip to Davos to pitch California as a counterweight to Trump’s climate and economic policies. Earlier this week, Newsom announced the state has surpassed 2.5 million purchases of zero-emission electric vehicles, a market he has often said Trump is ceding to China by backing away from clean energy.

On Tuesday, he pressed European leaders to stand up to Trump as the president increasingly speaks of attempting 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 touted his aggressive immigration raids in blue states.

“If I were a Democratic governor or whatever,” Trump said, “I would call up Trump, I’d say, ‘Come on in, make us look good.’”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.