President Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary likened Gavin Newsom to an “economically illiterate” serial killer after the California governor mocked his “smug” housing speech.
Bessent, 63, sparked widespread mockery on Tuesday by suggesting during a World Economic Forum event that it was completely normal for “mom and pop” to buy “5, 10, 12 homes” for their retirement, and that they must be protected.
After Newsom, 58, responded to the remark by joking that Bessent was a “smug man,” Bessent unloaded on the California governor, comparing Newsom to Patrick Bateman, the wealthy and materialistic yuppie who leads a secret life as a mass murderer in the book and movie American Psycho.
Bessent told Fox Business White House correspondent journalist Edward Lawrence: “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.”
He also sneered that Newsom was in Davos with his “billionaire sugar daddy” Alex Soros, “hobnobbing” with global elites while California struggles with the country’s biggest homeless population, adding: “Shame on him. He is too smug, too self-absorbed, and too economically illiterate to know anything.”
Asked later about Bessent’s broadsides, Newsom told The Guardian: “I’m in his head.”
The tantrum followed Newsom’s viral post sharing a clip of Bessent’s backfiring housing remarks. In one post, the governor wrote on X, “Scott, people are trying to buy 1 house—to live in.” In another, he asked: “Could this smug man be more out of touch?”
Newsom has used his trip to Switzerland to shadow Trump, 79, and his lieutenants. The prospective Democratic 2028 presidential candidate planted himself in the front row for Bessent’s speech.
He took notes and visibly scoffed as the secretary boasted that Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” approach had supposedly pushed gas prices below $2 a gallon—claims undercut by national price data.
Newsom told The Guardian he was in town to offer “a different point of view,” described Trump as a “historically unpopular president,” and predicted the most revealing parts of Trump’s Wednesday speech would be the off-script riffs shaped by his Fox News viewing.
