Trump and Newsom shared smiles and jokes behind the scenes at Davos – despite the insults and death stares in public

President Donald Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom reportedly had a friendly encounter at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, despite exchanging bitter personal insults in public.

According to journalist Mark Halperin, “The two men engaged in affable small talk backstage in a wide hallway area before the president’s speech,” which he delivered Wednesday, reiterating his demands that Greenland become a U.S. territory.

“No one who knows Donald Trump will be surprised to hear that he laid it on thick, deploying that super charming, winking manner that he uses in such cases,” Halperin wrote on X (Twitter).

“There was friendly banter all around, and mutual laughter when the president announced, ‘Gavin, we’re good.’”

Newsom, whom the journalist described as “no stranger to faux towel snapping,” is said to have given the president “a little s*** in a jovial and jokey manner,” before also sharing friendly words with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, her deputy James Blair, and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Only Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller is said to have been “less enthusiastic about engaging.”

Trump and Newsom sparred last year over the response to California’s deadly wildfires and the president’s deployment of ICE agents and the National Guard to Los Angeles. Also speaking on Wednesday, the former referred to the governor surprisingly warmly, saying he “used to get along so great with Gavin” and calling him “a good guy.”

Those remarks drew an incredulous stare and a chuckle of bemusement from Newsom, watching on from the rear of the auditorium, and by Thursday evening, Trump was back to lashing out at him on Truth Social.

“Gavin Newscum, as a ‘Lame Duck’ Governor of a Failing State, should not be at Davos running around screaming for the attention of Foreign Leaders, and embarrassing our Country,” the president wrote.

“He should get the permits so that people can build their homes destroyed by the fire that he could have prevented if he would have allowed water to flow from the Pacific Northwest.

“He should finish his monstrously ‘overbudget and behind schedule’ Railroad, from San Francisco to L.A., one of the Greatest Public Disasters in History, and focus on stopping Crime in the streets of California Cities – Then finish out his term, and GO HOME!

“He made a mockery of himself, and everybody, including his staff, knows it. With a record like he’s got, the ruination of one of the most beautiful places on Earth, where people are leaving in droves, it is unimaginable that he could run for President but, who knows, it’s a very strange World!”

Earlier in the day, the governor had taken part in an event hosted by Semafor’s editor-in-chief Ben Smith after a prior speaking engagement at USA House was abruptly cancelled, a development Newsom blamed on the Trump administration.

He used his 30-minute slot to label the president an “invasive species” and accuse him of caring only about personal enrichment and “cosplaying on the world stage,” saying he had been forced to conclude that the only way to take on Trumpism was to “fight fire with fire.”

Newsom also rebuked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for insulting him at the forum by saying: “Gov. Newsom, who strikes me as Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken, may be the only Californian who knows less about economics than Kamala Harris.”

“The Treasury Secretary talked about a Barbie doll,” the governor responded. “It was as if he was reading a diary and had just broken up with someone. I mean that was the Secretary of the Treasury using valuable time yesterday on the world stage.”

Bessent hit back again in an interview with Politico on Thursday, saying, “I think Gavin Newsom may be cracking up, some of these things he’s saying. I think he may be in over his hairdo.”

He also went after the governor for saying “strange things” about the president, for brandishing satirical Trump-branded kneeling pads in Davos, and for posing for a photograph with Alex Soros, son of the billionaire philanthropist and conservative hate figure George Soros.

“To say strange things like ‘President Trump is a Tyrannosaurus rex,’ what the hell does that mean?” Bessent asked. “I can say Gavin Newsom is a brontosaurus with a brain the size of a walnut. And, if you brought the knee pads, maybe that was for his meeting with Alex Soros.”