Gavin Newsom said he was denied entry to the U.S. hub in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday after he ripped into President Donald Trump’s speech before political and business leaders.
The California governor, 58, accused the White House and the State Department of pressuring USA House, the official pavilion for Americans at the World Economic Forum, into canceling his talk with Fortune at the last minute.
“Under pressure from the White House and State Department, USA House (a church acting as the official US pavilion) is now denying entry to @CAGovernor Gavin Newsom to speak with media after Fortune — the official media partner — invited him to speak,” his press office wrote on X.
“California was just denied at the USA House,” Newsom later said. “Last we checked, California is part of USA.”
The White House swiftly denied the Democratic firebrand’s accusation.
“No one in Davos knows who third-rate governor Newscum is or why he is frolicking around Switzerland instead of fixing the many problems he created in California,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement to the Daily Beast.
The state department referred the Daily Beast to the White House’s statement. USA House states on its website that it “does not represent the U.S. government and does not organize official government programming.”
In a private text exchange obtained by Politico, a USA House representative denied to a Newsom administration official that the organization “un-invited” the California governor or acted with a political motive. USA House emphasized in the text exchange that Newsom was still welcome to the venue, according to the outlet.
Earlier on Wednesday, Newsom tore into the 79-year-old president’s rambling speech that he described as “boring, and at times boorish.”
“It was insignificant in its insignificance. He said what we all knew: that he’s not going to invade Greenland,” he told The Guardian.
Trump delivered a low-energy speech after he landed in Switzerland nearly three hours behind schedule following an electrical issue on Air Force One that forced the presidential jet to make an abrupt U-turn to Washington, D.C. late Tuesday night.
The president spent more than an hour promising not to take Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, by force—while mistakenly referring to it as “Iceland”—and airing grievances against European allies.
Newsom was namedropped at one point.
“We’re going to help the people in California. We want to have no crime,” Trump said. “I know Gavin was here. I used to get along so great with Gavin when I was president.”
“Gavin’s a good guy, and we’re going to. If he needed it, I would do it in a heartbeat. I’d love to see—we did help them a lot in Los Angeles, a lot with the early, early in my term, when they had some problems, but we would love to do it,” he went on.
Cameras captured Newsom breaking into a grin as he listened on.
“The President of the United States is at Davos addressing the world’s top leaders … and he still can’t stop thinking about @CAGovernor Gavin Newsom,” his press office later quipped on X.
