Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, has decried Europeans for their “complicity” in failing to stand up to Donald Trump’s demands that he be allowed to buy or annex Greenland.
Newsom, a frontrunner among Democratic candidates for president in 2028, told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday that Europeans were being “played” by Trump and that their efforts to negotiate with him were “not diplomacy, it’s stupidity”.
“It’s time to buck up, it’s time to get serious and stop being complicit,” he told reporters. “I can’t take this complicity. People rolling over. I should have brought kneepads for all the world leaders … this is pathetic.”
Newsom regularly suggests that US politicians who cosy up to Trump should be given kneepads – making it easier to kneel – and he sells them on his website. “For all your groveling to Trump needs now in Republican red,” reads the advertisement for the kneepads, which bear a copy of Trump’s signature. “For the low low price of your soul.”
European leaders have been hesitant to risk an open rupture in ties with the US, which is a major trading partner and on which Europe relies for much of its security. A number of European leaders have vied for the role of “Trump whisperer” as they have sought to prevent him from withdrawing support for Ukraine or pulling out of Nato.
But Trump’s demands that he be allowed to take over Greenland, which is a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, and his threat to tariff European governments until the territory is given to him, have elicited confusion, anger and proposals to retaliate by levying Europe’s own tariffs against the United States.
A number of European politicians wrote to Trump to seek meetings with him before the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. In one, Mark Rutte, the secretary-general of Nato and formerly the prime minister of the Netherlands, continued to take a flattering tone with Trump, saying that “what you accomplished in Syria today is incredible”.
He was referring to the conclusion of a ceasefire between Syrian government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
“I will use my media engagements in Davos to highlight your work there, in Gaza, and in Ukraine,” Rutte continued. “I am committed to finding a way forward on Greenland. Can’t wait to see you.”
