All the world’s a stage for California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The second-term governor and likely 2028 presidential candidate has taken his Donald Trump-bashing tour to the Munich Security Conference, weeks after he was in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum.
“I hope, if there’s nothing else I can communicate today: Donald Trump is temporary. He’ll be gone in three years,” Newsom told his international audience Friday in Germany.
The official topic Friday was climate policy and countering a warming planet, and Newsom was more than willing to hammer Trump for “doubling down on stupid” by effectively gutting the nation’s regulation of carbon pollution.
On Saturday, while still in Europe, Newsom plans to formalize a new partnership with Ukraine, signing a memorandum of understanding with regional leaders aimed at “advancing cooperation on economic recovery, innovation, and resilience,” according to his office.
The larger point of the travel, though, is Newsom continuing his effort to be recognized as Democrats’ highest-profile counter to the president, this time with a global emphasis. To be clear, Newsom doesn’t directly pitch himself as a presidential candidate yet. But his international appearances at Davos, when he told the international community to stand up to Trump, and then in Munich are just the latest of his many maneuvers that extend beyond his day job in Sacramento.
“He is certainly trying to project front-runner vibes,” said Democratic pollster Zac McCrary, whose Alabama-based firm was among the leading pollsters for Hillary Clinton’s, Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’ campaigns. “And like any Democratic governor trying to run for president, you have to build your national security credential, foreign policy chops. He’s in that phase here.”
Coming up: South Carolina
The Germany trip comes a week before Newsom makes a return visit to South Carolina, which is vying to keep its spot as a key early presidential primary state in Democrats’ 2028 nominating calendar. And it follows a year in which Newsom perfected using his social media to mock Trump using the president’s own style and syntax, while also leveraging his power as governor to have California’s congressional maps redrawn in Democrats’ favor to counter Trump’s gerrymandering push in Texas and other Republican states.
Two other high-profile Democrats, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, are in Munich as well. McCrary is one of Whitmer’s pollsters.
“Foreign policy can be a proxy for gravitas, for maturity, for stability,” McCrary said. “If Democrats in 2028, as I think is almost inevitably going to be the case, are looking for the antidote to Trump, or in a lot of ways looking for the inverse of Trump, to have foreign policy credentials and maturity about it will go a long way.”
Ukraine agreement
On Saturday in Munich, Newsom will participate in a panel discussion on international alliances. That forum will offer Newsom another opportunity to critique Trump on a range of issues: his handling of NATO, threats to take over Greenland, U.S. boat strikes in international waters and the military mission to topple Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
The governor’s advisers see the trip and the Ukraine deal as a way to demonstrate California’s importance in global markets — a frame that theoretically affords Newsom a stature that governors in less populous states and other elected officials cannot match.
“At a time when Donald Trump is turning his back on allies, attacking clean energy, and siding with the powerful over working people, Gov. Newsom is inking new partnerships that create jobs, grow businesses, and create opportunity,” his office said in a statement.
The governor’s office did not disclose details of the Ukraine agreement.
Climate remarks needle Trump
Newsom used Friday’s climate discussion, meanwhile, to tout his environmental credentials and needle Trump — approaches that appeal to core Democratic voters — while also nodding to a broader audience.
He declared that “never, in the history of the United States of America, has there been a more destructive president” for the planet than Trump, and he held up California’s long history of enacting environmental regulations that were then adopted nationally.
“California has been a leader in climate policy going back to Ronald Reagan,” Newsom said of the Republican 40th president and conservative icon who was also a California governor.
He also name-checked Republican President Richard Nixon, who once represented southern California in Congress.
Reagan enacted the first tailpipe emissions in the U.S. in 1967, Newsom said, and created a state air quality board. He noted that Nixon followed California’s lead with the federal Clean Air Act in 1970. Nixon also signed the Environmental Protection Agency into law — the same agency that, on Thursday, repealed the U.S. government’s finding that carbon emissions are harmful.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Newsom’s comments or trip. But Trump hailed his environmental move Thursday as “the single largest deregulatory action in American history, by far.”
Newsom added that politicians and advocates who want better policy should make an economic argument and not simply a moral one. He alluded to California wildfires — exacerbated by climate change — that have raised insurance rates and even made some properties uninsurable.
“There is no Republican thermometer. There is no Democratic thermometer,” Newsom said. “There’s just reality.”
He pointed to China’s gross domestic product growth and said investments in alternative energy have a multiplier effect, contrary to Trump’s framing that cleaner energy policy costs too much.
“It’s incredibly important,” Newsom said, “that we talk in those terms to address some of the political dynamics.”
—- Barrow reported from Atlanta. Blood reported from Los Angeles.
Bill Barrow And Michael R. Blood, The Associated Press
