Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent delivered a clever insult to California Governor Gavin Newsom at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday – and it quickly went viral.
Newsom called Bessent “smug” a day earlier while criticizing the Trump administration at the gathering of the world’s biggest globalist and business elites.
Bessent fired back that the 2028 Democratic presidential frontrunner “economically illiterate” and compared him to the psychopath at the heart of “American Psycho” combined with a Barbie doll.
“I think it’s very, very ironic that Governor Newsom — who strikes me as Patrick Bateman meets ‘Sparkle Beach Ken’ — may be the only Californian who knows less about economics than Kamala Harris,” Bessent quipped.
“He’s here this week with his billionaire sugar daddy, Alex Soros, and Davos is a perfect place for a man who, when everyone else was on lockdown, when he was having people arrested for going to church, he was having $1,000 a night meals at the French Laundry,” Bessent said.
Newsom was widely criticized in November 2020 after a dinner at a luxury Napa Valley restaurant while voters were under strict COVID-19 lockdown.
The Treasury secretary questioned why Newsom was not giving a speech on his own policies at the forum.
“I was told he was asked to give a speech on his signature policies, but he’s not speaking because what have his economic policies brought? Outward migration from California, a gigantic budget deficit, the largest homeless population in America, and the poor folks in the Palisades who had their homes burned down,” Bessent said.
“He is here hobnobbing with the global elite while his California citizens are still homeless. Shame on him,” Bessent continued. “He’s too smug, too self-absorbed, and too economically illiterate to know anything.”
Bessent’s remarks come as the Trump administration intensifies its scrutiny of alleged fraud and mismanagement in several Democrat-led states.
California is one of five deep blue states where $10 billion in federal childcare and family assistance funding has been frozen amid investigations into widespread fraud.
The Department of Justice indicted Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, in November 2025 on 23 counts related to conspiracy, fraud, and obstruction of justice.
According to the Department of Government Efficiency, California was responsible for $305 million of a reported $382 million in fraudulent unemployment payments since 2020.