Susan Shelley: Gavin Newsom grandstands and flops at Davos

Gov. Gavin Newsom is back from his all-expense-paid trip to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. Guess who paid for it.

Every special interest in California.

KCRA in Sacramento reported that the cost of this trip, like all the governor’s official travel, was paid by the California State Protocol Foundation. The mission of the foundation is “to lessen the burden on California taxpayers by relieving California of its obligations to fund certain expenditures.”

That’s how it’s described in the publicly available behested payment reports that Gov. Newsom filed, as required, with the Fair Political Practices Commission. The FPPC explains on its website that a behested payment is not a gift or a campaign contribution, but a payment made “at the request, suggestion, or solicitation of, or made in cooperation, consultation, coordination, or concert with the public official.”

That explanation can be shortened to just one word: “shakedown.”

Unlike donations to a campaign committee or PAC, behested payments have no contribution limit. The only limitation is that the payments must be for a “legislative, governmental or charitable purpose.” Payments totaling $5,000 or more in a calendar year from a single source must be reported within 30 days.

Behested payments have funded the California State Protocol Foundation. In 2025, Newsom “behested” a payment of $220,000 from the University of California Berkeley for the “charitable” purpose of paying the costs of attending the Vatican climate summit. He “behested” the U.S. Energy Foundation out of $150,000 to pay for his “delegation” to the COP30 climate change conference in Brazil, also described as a “charitable” purpose.

Newsom hit up Zoox, Inc., an autonomous vehicle subsidiary of Amazon, and Centene Management Company, LLC, of St. Louis, “a leading provider of government-sponsored healthcare,” for $25,000 each “in support of general operations” of the Protocol Foundation.

But the largest behested payments came from Newsom’s own inaugural committees. The “2023 Governor’s Inaugural Fund” paid the California State Protocol Foundation a total of $2 million in 2023 and 2024. The “Governor’s Inaugural Fund 2019” paid $700,000 in April 2019 and $2,436,317 in May 2020.

The reports of behested payments to the inaugural committees reveal who was on the receiving end of a “request, suggestion or solicitation” from the newly elected or re-elected governor.

Everybody. Indian tribes, apartment associations, beverage companies, health care and hospital companies, the carpenters’ union, the nurses’ union, the teachers’ union, the firefighters’ union,  the prison guards’ union, AT&T, Amazon, Uber, the service employees, the electrical workers, the pipe trades council, the building industry association, the operating engineers, the professional engineers, the charter schools, the aircraft manufacturers and many, many more.

About $5.1 million of the roughly $8.8 million that Newsom asked special interests to pay for the “governmental” purpose of inaugural events ended up transferred to the Protocol Foundation, where it is used to prop up the governor on the world stage as he emotes for cameras about climate change and complains that not enough has been done to stop Donald Trump.

Not enough? Jack Smith, Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, Hillary Clinton, the January 6th Committee, two sets of impeachment prosecutors and whoever allowed that sniper on the roof in Butler must be wondering what it takes to impress Gavin Newsom.

Democratic political analyst and former Obama advisor David Axelrod wrote in an online post that he was finding Newsom’s “’Why can’t people just be as courageous as ME?’ routine” to be “tedious.”

It was certainly predictable. Before Newsom left California for Davos, his office was telling reporters that he would present California as an alternative to the Trump administration, “a beacon of stability and loyalty.”

What does that even mean? Are we going to defend Europe with $6 billion in carbon credits and a third of a bullet train?

When he got off the plane in Davos, Newsom was a regular insult comic. He told reporters that U.S. allies were “pathetic” for not standing up to Trump. He said the president “is a T-rex – you mate with him or he devours you.” He waved around knee pads to show contempt for leaders he views as being on their knees to Trump.

Asked about Newsom’s criticisms, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went full Don Rickles. Opening with, “Governor Newsom, who strikes me as Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken,” Bessent went on to roast Newsom as “the only Californian who knows less about economics than Kamala Harris.” He got in a dig about Newsom’s “billionaire sugar daddy, Alex Soros” and worked in the “$1,000-a-night meals at the French Laundry” during the COVID lockdown.

Rickles might have paid a lot for that “American Psycho” meets “Barbie” joke. But Bessent was probably not joking when he said this: “My message to Governor Newsom is the Trump administration is coming to California. We are going to crack down on waste, fraud and abuse.”

Newsom had been scheduled to speak at an event connected to the World Economic Forum, but somehow he was canceled, missing out on a high-profile opportunity to claim that his state is leading the world on climate change.

The truth is that President Donald Trump is ending climate change alarmism and the costly and inefficient swamp of subsidies and mandates that have kept it going. Trump’s speech at Davos made clear that the United States will proudly pursue the development of every kind of energy that California has proudly vowed to ban – nuclear, natural gas, oil and coal.

If Newsom had dreams of flying to Davos and being praised by world leaders as an alternative to Trump who is both superior and inevitable, the Trump team acidly crushed them. “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,” a White House spokesperson said.

But all is not lost for the governor. He still has enough juice in California to get a free trip.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley