Gavin Newsom’s ‘Self-Puffery’ Gets Him in Trouble With David Axelrod
Are even Democrats starting to get sick of Gavin Newsom’s constant self-aggrandizement?
If longtime Obama adviser David Axelrod is (again) voicing Democrats’ quiet thoughts out loud, perhaps so.
“Haven’t we seen enough self-puffery in our leaders?” Axelrod said on X in response to Newsom’s appearance in Davos, Switzerland. “This, ‘Why can’t people just be as courageous as ME?’ routine is tedious.”
At the World Economic Forum last week, the California governor repeatedly slammed the U.S. president and presented himself as the perfect moral alternative with a record of ideal governance.
Newsom attacked world leaders for their “complicity” in dealing with the U.S. president and told them to “buck up” and “grow a backbone” against Trump. He joked about bringing “knee pads” for foreign dignitaries approaching Trump and compared Trump to a Tyrannosaurus that “mates with you or devours you.” In an interview with CNN, Newsom called Trump’s speech at Davos “remarkably boring” and “remarkably insignificant.” (RELATED: Thank You, Trump, for Reminding Europe’s Leaders How Utterly Stupid They Are)
Newsom, who appeared to be at the meeting of world leaders to tear down the leader of his country, was shocked when the federal government blocked him from speaking at an official U.S. government forum there. He went so far as to deem his exclusion “consistent with this administration and their authoritarian tendencies.”
Newsom even spoke using the royal “we” to argue that he had arrived at Davos with “moral authority.”
“Look, give me a category and California outperforms — the fourth-largest economy in the world. And so we can punch above our weight. We can come here with formal authority and a little moral authority. And I tell you, we need a little moral authority in our body politic in the United States of America today.” (RELATED: Gavin Newsom, ‘King of Fraud’)
During an onstage interview with Semafor, Newsom warned that the U.S. system of government is on the brink of destruction.
“We can lose our republic as we know it, our country can become unrecognizable in a matter of months if not years,” Newsom said. “It is code red, blinking red in the United States of America.”
It was this sort of commentary that raised the ire of sports analyst and now radio host Stephen A. Smith, who is politically moderate.
“Gavin Newsom, respectfully, what are you doing? You’re the governor of the state of California in the United States of America. Why are you over in Davos, Switzerland, talking to folks and speaking negatively about the president of the United States? … I have no problem with Gavin Newsom being candid and open about his feelings about our president on United States soil…. To go over there and to be in the presence of other European leaders speaking against the president of the United States, I’m not down with that…. When we go somewhere else, it’s America first.”
For the third time, Axelrod is warning Democrats about the electoral prospects of their top presumed candidate two years prior to the presidential election.
Axelrod did not back down from the doubts he raised about Newsom, who has emerged as the Democratic presidential candidate to beat come 2028. In an interview with Axios published Tuesday following Newsom’s Davos appearance, Axelrod subtly owned Newsom’s lack of authenticity and humility.
“Authenticity is an essential quality in any presidential candidate,” said Axelrod. “And after Trump, I believe humility will be, too.”
Newsom drew further criticism from the Left for posing in Davos for a picture with Alex Soros, the billionaire heir of George Soros. In posting the picture, Soros lavished praise on Newsom for telling world leaders to refuse to work with the U.S. president.
“So glad he’s here calling out world leaders for believing appeasement works when it comes to Trump. It doesn’t. It only emboldens him to become more chaotic and destructive,” said Soros. “World leaders could take a page out of Newsom’s book. It’s time to stand tall, stand firm, and stand united — before it’s too late.”
Perhaps the only man who had less time for Newsom’s antics in Davos than David Axelrod and Stephan A. Smith was Scott Bessent. The treasury secretary, while still in Switzerland, said Newsom operates with a “brain the size of a walnut.” He described Newsom as “Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken” and said he is “the only Californian who knows less about economics than Kamala Harris.” Newsom is, said Bessent, “too smug, too self-absorbed, and too economically illiterate to know anything.”
Bessent further told Politico, “I think Gavin Newsom may be cracking up, some of these things he’s saying. I think he may be in over his hairdo.” He warned Newsom that the federal government is “coming to California” in order to “crack down on waste, fraud and abuse.” (RELATED: Feds Demand That ‘King of Fraud’ Gavin Newsom Pay Back $1.3 Billion)
While in Davos, Newsom was in fact asked to account for the fact that his state’s budget is in tatters and is expected to begin running consistent $35 billion deficits next year. Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of Semafor, asked Newsom, “How are voters looking at California, looking at New York, looking at Chicago, supposed to say, ‘Yeah, this is the model that we want’?”
Newsom did not reckon with the fact that California has the nation’s worst cost of living, the nation’s worst poverty rate, the nation’s worst unemployment rate, and the nation’s second-highest housing costs. No, he simply pointed to the success of industries that were headquartered in California prior to his election as governor — and left out that his policies have made many of these companies leave the state.
“We have more Fortune 500 companies than any other state in America,” Newsom responded. “More scientists, engineers, more Nobel laureates in my state than any state in America, the finest system of higher public education in the world. We have 18 percent of the world’s R&D — China, 22 percent; Germany, 21 percent; California, 18 percent of the world’s R&D. We’re the center of the universe as it relates to AI.”
In his remarks, Bessent pointed out that Newsom’s economic policies have delivered “[o]utward migration from California, a gigantic budget deficit, [and] the largest homeless population in America.”
In June 2022, Axelrod was one of the earliest Democrats to speak out on then-President Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline. “The presidency is a monstrously taxing job and the stark reality is the president would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term, and that would be a major issue,” he said in June 2022, when most Democrats were happy to indulge Biden in his essentially unchallenged reelection bid.
In addition, in 2014, Axelrod warned about Hillary Clinton’s preparations for her 2016 presidential run. He said that she needed to “get out of the cocoon of inevitability.”
“Tactics have to follow strategy,” Axelrod said. “I think the danger for Secretary Clinton is that, as was the case in 2007, her candidacy is out in front of the rationale for it.”
Clinton, said Axelrod, would be “foolish” to believe that the coalition Obama built of black, Hispanic, female, and young voters would mean that the Democrats would hold the White House for years to come. “That should not give her solace that the job is done,” Axelrod said. “I think the candidate who’s going to win in 2016 is the candidate who aggressively and in a forward-thinking way deals with this fundamental issue of the stagnancy of wages, the problems of the middle class, the lack of economic mobility that are central to who we are as a country.”
Here we are again. For the third time, Axelrod is warning Democrats about the electoral prospects of their top presumed candidate two years prior to the presidential election. The last two times, he was right on. Democrats would be wise to listen again, because Gavin Newsom’s “self-puffery” is probably too much for many Americans to stomach.
Ellie Gardey Holmes is the author of Newsom Unleashed: The Progressive Lust for Unbridled Power.