'some Of You Are Probably Fine With It’: Newsom Confronts Business Elite On Trump

NEW YORK — Gavin Newsom lit into an audience full of financial power brokers here Wednesday, criticizing what he cast as their complicity with Donald Trump’s agenda.

In a message designed more for the cameras than the room, the California governor and likely Democratic presidential contender told attendees of the New York Times DealBook Summit that they should look into the kneepads he’s selling, in parody, to those “groveling to Trump’s needs.”

“Some of you may need to buy them in bulk,” Newsom told the crowd.

Speaking between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk, Newsom repeatedly pivoted his interview responses toward Trump. He bemoaned the Trump administration’s deployment of federal agents to a campaign kickoff for his congressional gerrymander and warned the country was tipping into authoritarianism before expanding his criticism to the business interests in the crowd.

“Some of you are probably fine with it,” Newsom said. “A lot of people figured it out. They know the game, state capitalism, crony capitalism, the great grift. A lot of you are doing extraordinarily well.”

Audience members took his soft lecturing in stride, offering light applause and no audible boos. Two members of the audience described Newsom's performance as resembling that of a younger Joe Biden. Another, who said they'd always viewed the California governor as a slick operator, said that they were impressed by his overall presentation.

But the California governor’s use of the crowd as a foil offered him a chance to distance himself from the business and political elite — associations that could be problematic with his party’s left flank in 2028.

A Newsom adviser said the governor’s confrontational approach was deliberate, given that he was the only Democratic official on the summit’s agenda today.

“So he came prepared to speak truth,“ the adviser said.

The governor, who got his start running small businesses including a Napa Valley vineyard, still made an effort to appeal to the crowd dotted with Wall Street executives. He condemned a nascent attempt to pass a wealth tax in his state, and invoked Republican favorite Ronald Reagan’s regulation of tailpipe emissions as California — as Newsom often does — to make the case for environmental rules.

He also passed on a chance to tear into Apple CEO Tim Cook for buddying up to Trump, saying he’s “doing what he needs to do on behalf of his shareholders.”

“That's his job. So do I begrudge that? Yes, but do I begrudge him? Not as much,” Newsom said.

But more often, he chided a portion of the upper 1 percent that he described as catering to Trump, condemning the “self-dealing” that has gone on among cryptocurrency and other tech figures profiting from being in Trump’s orbit.

“It's very situational with a lot of these guys,” Newsom said of tech executives’ politics, naming David Sacks, who has benefited financially as one of Trump’s top tech officials, according to the New York Times.

Melanie Mason contributed to this report.