The Daily Signal - Newsom’s Davos Ego Trip Left California Broke, Isolated, and Desperate

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

Instead flaunting his new red “Trump kneepads” to world leaders and corporate elite in Davos, Switzerland, during the 56th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, Gavin Newsom should be more concerned about this state’s abysmal relationship with the federal government argues Elaine Culotti, Daily Signal California correspondent, on today’s special video commentary. “To be clear, our biggest problem in California is the fact that we have no relationship whatsoever with President Trump and the administration. So we can't pick up the phone and call and say, “Hey, we need a lifeline.” It does not exist. It's been destroyed. And with the Pacific Palisades and the fires in California, it has been unveiled how deep that destruction is.” 👉For more videos like this, subscribe to The Daily Signal’s YouTube channel and enable notifications to be alerted the second a new video drops: https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Has anybody been watching what's going on in Davos? So I just want to sew things up a little bit, being from California and watching Gavin Newsom. What I have seen the last couple of days is positively disturbing. This man, Gavin Newsom, governor of California, thinks it's okay to refer to world leaders as people who need pads because they are working with the Trump administration. To be clear, our biggest problem in California is the fact that we have no relationship whatsoever with President Trump and the administration. So we can't pick up the phone and call and say,

hey, we need a lifeline. It does not exist. It's been destroyed. We are hung out to dry by Gavin Newsom. Hi, I'm Elaine Kalati, and I'm reporting for The Daily Signal. I got a new sign. Do we like it? Has anybody been watching what's going on in Davos?

So I just want to sew things up a little bit. being from California and watching Gavin Newsom. What I have seen the last couple of days is positively disturbing. Gavin Newsom and his action and reaction to comments made, and he is responsible, he's made his own comments on his own. He made a comment about knee pads. He's made multiple comments about world leaders. He's made comments about how he's been treated. and these things represent California.

And my state and me and people like me are not going to tolerate being represented like that. It's just not okay. We need to have some dignity and we need to be really responsible and mindful of how we speak when we're at a microphone. It's hard to get up to a microphone when you're really opinionated and nobody knows better than me because there's so many things that I want to say that are screaming out of my head. But you got to hold back a little bit and you have to be mindful because you have no idea how somebody else might feel about that situation.

And I am offended. I am so offended that this man, Gavin Newsom, governor of California, thinks it's okay to refer to world leaders as people who need need pads because they are working with the Trump administration. To be clear, our biggest problem in California is the fact that we have no relationship whatsoever with President Trump and the administration. So we can't pick up the phone and call and say, hey, we need a lifeline. It does not exist. It's been destroyed. And with the Pacific Palisades and the fires in California, it has been unveiled how deep that destruction is. Because now we have no money for repairs. We don't have money for our infrastructure. And we don't have any way to call up

President Trump and the Trump administration and say, hey, come and help us. We are hung out to dry by Gavin Newsom. Gavin Newsom has ruined any chance of, at least while he is in office, California having a relationship that is helpful and meaningful to California with the Trump administration and President Trump. This should not be lost on anyone because in addition to that, we have run through all of our revenue, our revenue that is produced by taxpayers. The only revenue left in California, which, by the way Gavin Newsom still calls revenue, is taxed. Tax and taxing and taxing on top of taxing. That is the only revenue in California.

Earning money to pay taxes has dwindled. Initially, we had approximately $300 billion per year in our general fund. That would just come in and go out and come in and go out. After Gavin Newsom's first four years, it dropped to $265 billion. We lost $35 billion of come in, go out, come in, go out. And that, in part, was all the people that left and the joke about the fact that we are the best U-Haul representative in the world. That is what that joke was all about. And there's other jokes like many governors have said that Gavin Newsom is the best economic

development governor of all time for other states because he drives business out of California into other states. And this is happening in front of your eyes and you don't have to listen listen to Gavin Newsom's fake math on that, it's very easy to look at it, look at the general fund. Where did the taxpayers go? Finally, Gavin Newsom sits very smugly with his legs crossed and says that he has nothing to do with the billionaire's tax reform bill that is in Sacramento to be reviewed that needs about 800,000 signatures before it goes on the ballot in November, which aims to tax billionaires on assets. that they have not sold, that they still own an equity tax, essentially. They're calling it a

billionaire's tax, but it's not a billionaire's tax. It's nothing like that. That's a shameful way to name things, and that's what happens in California. And what Gavin could have said today, instead of saying that he doesn't promote the billionaire's tax and he's not a proponent of it, what he could have said is the problem is here California consistently names bills inappropriately in order to get people that are the big voter democratic base that are not necessarily the taxpayers or even American citizens for that matter to vote for things by using terms like billionaires tax mansion tax rich people tax tax tax the rich wealth tax. These are antics to get people that are voting, to be swayed into thinking that somehow this is not going to affect them. And Gavin Newsom did not take any accountability for that today while he

sat and was interviewed. Instead, what he does is he kicks the can down the road and says things like, well, I'm not going to endorse that or I'm not really for that. What he doesn't say is, oh yeah, that's a really bad idea and we're going to stop that. You know what else we're going to do? We're going to stop misnaming bills. Okay, that's another thing that we're going to do. We're going to stop trying to gaslight people into thinking that this is just about, I repeat, we're going to stop gaslighting people to think this is just about going after the rich, the wealthy, the billionaires, the mansions, the upper class. What we're going to do from now on is we're going to be honest and we're going to tell people, the reason that California is,

is in deep trouble is because Gavin Newsom, me, Mr. Gavin Newsom, have not protected the taxpayers in the state in all classes. In fact, we've gone after them to cover the bills that we have no money for. And on that, it's Elaine Collati and I am signing out for the Daily Signal.