Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ripped California Gov. Gavin Newsom for his comments calling the Trump official “smug.”
On Tuesday, Bessent spoke on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he said some parents may be buying “five, 10, 12 homes” for retirement. Newsom took to X to reshare a clip of the remarks, writing: “Could this smug man be more out of touch?”
In response, Bessent snapped back, calling the governor “too smug, too self-absorbed and too economically illiterate.”
“Governor Newsom, who strikes me as Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken, may be the only Californian who knows less about economics than Kamala Harris,” Bessent told a Fox reporter in Davos.
“He’s here this week with his billionaire sugar daddy, Alex Soros, and Davos is a perfect place for a man who, when everyone else was on lockdown, was having people arrested for going to church.”
The Democrat governor sat in a last-minute open seat next to Bessent’s staff during the Treasury Secretary’s Fox Business panel.
Newsom took notes and silently scoffed at some of Bessent’s comments, including claims that “drill, baby, drill” has pushed gasoline prices below $2, that Trump has helped other prices come down, and that there will be a real rise in income in the coming year, a senior CBS News reporter shared on X.
During Donald Trump’s address at Davos on Wednesday, he reiterated comments from a day earlier saying he and Newsom “used to get along.”
“We’re going to help the people in California. We want to have no crime. I know Gavin was here. I used to get along so great with Gavin when I was president. Gavin is a good guy,” Trump said.
On Tuesday, Newsom urged European leaders not to give in to “T-Rex” Trump.
“It’s time to stand tall and firm and have a backbone. I can’t take this complicity, people rolling over,” Newsom told a reporter when asked what Europe should do amid the president’s threats to take over Greenland. “I should have brought a bunch of knee pads for all the world leaders.”
Newsom arrived in Davos earlier this week and has already drawn fury from the White House for “undermining the U.S. on the world stage.”
“Gavin Newsom should stop undermining the United States on the world stage and start fixing his own broken state back home,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai told The Post.
The California Democrat, widely viewed as a frontrunner for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, is seen by many as attempting to raise his profile ahead of the election.
Trump, in an earlier press conference marking one year since the start of his second term, said he and Newsom once had a strong relationship that has since declined.
“He and I had a very good relationship — really close to the word exceptional — but now we seem not to,” the president said.
Newsom is scheduled to speak in Davos a day after Trump.
