President Trump fired a pointed warning at British leaders this week after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a clean energy memorandum with U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband during a European diplomacy tour that has all the subtlety of a 2028 campaign launch.
In an interview with Politico, Trump called the partnership "inappropriate," adding a characteristically unsparing assessment of the arrangement.
"The U.K.'s got enough trouble without getting involved with Gavin Newscum."
The rebuke came after Newsom spent the past week globe-trotting through Munich, signing agreements with foreign governments and openly trashing the sitting president on the international stage. He attended the Munich Security Conference, inked a cooperation pact with the Lviv region of Ukraine, and told an international audience that the current administration is merely "temporary" and will be "gone in three years."
For a governor who insists he's just doing state business, that's a lot of foreign policy rhetoric.
As Fox News reported, Newsom's European swing included two headline-grabbing agreements. The first, signed on Saturday, was a pact with the Lviv region of Ukraine that would involve California companies in "rebuilding and resiliency" efforts across defense, energy, and digital technologies. The second was the clean energy memorandum with Miliband, which Newsom's office claims would facilitate "nearly a billion dollars in new investment."
These agreements are typically structured as nonbinding memoranda of understanding and do not carry the force of federal treaties. It's worth sitting with that for a moment. The governor of a single state is flying overseas, staging signing ceremonies with foreign officials, and projecting a dollar figure that his own office generated with no independent verification, all while the agreements themselves carry no legal weight.
The State Department has historically encouraged "subnational diplomacy," particularly on trade, and governors from both parties routinely lead overseas economic missions. But there is a canyon of difference between a trade mission and what Newsom is doing. Trade missions don't typically involve telling foreign audiences that the American president is a temporary inconvenience.
Newsom has long been viewed by political strategists and analysts as a possible Democratic presidential contender in 2028. Nothing about his behavior in Munich suggests otherwise. This is not a governor managing California's economic interests abroad. This is a second-term Democrat who has run out of runway in Sacramento and is building a brand for what comes next.
Consider the posture. At the Munich Security Conference, Newsom aimed not just at the White House but at every foreign leader who has engaged constructively with the Trump administration.
"I can't take this complicity of people rolling over. I mean, handing out crowns, the Nobel prizes that are being given away ... it's just pathetic."
He previously told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January that he "should have brought a bunch of knee pads" for world leaders who he believes have bowed down to the president's "transactional" diplomacy.
So the pitch to a Democratic primary electorate is taking shape:
It's audacious. It's also deeply unserious.
When Fox News Digital reached out for comment, Newsom's spokesperson delivered a response that read less like a governor's communications office and more like a campaign war room.
"Donald Trump is on his knees for coal and Big Oil, selling out America's future to China. Governor Newsom will continue to lead in his absence. Foreign leaders are rejecting Trump and choosing California's vision for the future."
Three sentences. Every single one is a campaign line. "Lead in his absence" does the most work: it frames Newsom not as a state executive cooperating with federal policy but as a rival head of state filling a vacuum. That's the 2028 thesis statement, delivered on the record by an official spokesperson.
The claim that "foreign leaders are rejecting Trump and choosing California's vision" is doing some heavy lifting as well. One energy secretary from a country currently navigating its own political turbulence signed a nonbinding memo. That's not a geopolitical realignment. It's a photo opportunity.
The deeper problem for Newsom is the contradiction sitting at the center of his argument. He wants to be taken seriously as a global leader while governing a state that can't keep its lights on during a heat wave, can't house its residents, and can't stop its population from fleeing to states with lower taxes and fewer regulations. He lectures foreign heads of state about growing a backbone while presiding over a state where small businesses buckle under compliance costs that Sacramento itself created.
Newsom insists California represents the future. But every U-Haul leaving Los Angeles for Austin tells a different story.
There's also the matter of federalism. Governors do not conduct foreign policy. They can promote trade. They can build economic relationships. But staging rival diplomatic events, signing agreements with wartime nations on defense cooperation, and publicly undermining the president's negotiating position with allies is something else entirely. It's not leadership. It's freelancing.
Trump's comments weren't just a swipe at Newsom. They were a message to any foreign government considering the California governor a back channel worth cultivating. When the president of the United States calls a partnership "inappropriate" and warns a nation's leaders by name, that registers in foreign ministries. Recent controversies over Arctic sovereignty and NATO funding have already tested relationships between Washington and its allies. No serious government wants to add friction with the White House over a nonbinding memo with Sacramento.
That's the part Newsom either doesn't understand or doesn't care about. Foreign leaders who engage with him aren't making a bet on California. They're making a bet against the current administration. And Trump just made clear that he's keeping score.
Newsom can fly to Munich. He can sign whatever memoranda he likes. He can call the president temporary. But the foreign leaders sitting across the table from him know something his spokesperson won't say out loud: a governor who has to travel six thousand miles to find an audience that takes him seriously has already told you everything about his standing at home.
