The Gavin Newsom I know isn’t just a slick salesman – he’s ready to take on ‘T-rex’ Trump

Yesterday, after Donald Trump again warned Europeans not to hamper his plans to annex Greenland, California governor Gavin Newsom addressed some reporters as he walked through the lobby of a hotel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The Democratic frontrunner for the next US general election told them that their leaders were humiliating themselves by trying to reason with our president. “It’s time to buck up. It’s time to get serious and stop being complicit. It’s time to stand tall, and firm, and have a backbone,” he told the reporters.

“I can’t take this complicity. People rolling over. I should have brought a bunch of kneepads for all the world leaders. Handing out crowns? Nobel prizes being given away? I hope people understand how pathetic they look on the world stage. It’s embarrassing.

“Trump is a T-rex. You mate with him or he devours you, one or the other, and you need to stand up to it,” he concluded, telling Europeans to “stay tall and united”.

And so Gavin Newsom announced himself as the US leader Europe is desperately crying out for. Was this the moment he became the next Democratic leader of the United States?

It would be bad form, and bad politics, for an American politician to tell other countries to pull their diplomats from our embassies and amass battleships in the vicinity of Greenland.

But Newsom made it clear that giving Trump your Nobel Peace Prize, like Maria Corina Machado did, or telling him, as did Nato secretary general Mark Rutte, that “what you accomplished in Syria today is incredible” – or even calling the US president “daddy” – is as effective as handing over the Sudetenland.

Us Californians are used to this kind of performance from Newsom. I first had lunch with him decades ago, when he was trying to sell me an expensive wine. Newsom was like a car salesman. So was Joe Biden (though Biden knew a lot about foreign policy). He was also like a rich-kid Californian, but he’s also very effective and has politics I can get behind.

He won me over in 2004 when he was mayor of San Francisco and started marrying gay couples himself in that window when George W Bush was threatening to make it illegal again. While there wasn’t much risk in taking a pro-gay stance in San Francisco, he did make himself the face of a movement that wasn’t yet popular.

By contrast, I met Trump when I was a preliminary judge for his Miss USA beauty contest. It is a sign of our times that I first met both Newsom and Trump in degenerate settings. Neither he nor Newsom made me imagine high public office in their future.

Both of those events happened in 2001, when Dido was thanking us for giving her the best day of her life. But now we are living in fearful, angry times, and people demand toughness in their leaders. It is a time when we laidback Californians are proud to be led by our governor Gavin Newsom. Now Europe knows why.

Let me assure you Brits that Trump coveting Greenland is as surprising to us as it is to you. The only time Americans think about Greenland is once every seven years when we accidentally glimpse a map of the world and say, “This one’s wrong. Greenland isn’t that big.” It’s entirely possible, in fact, that you caused this, and Trump got the idea from watching the Gerard Butler movies Greenland and Greenland 2: Migration.

I had hoped our next president would be Cory Booker, whom I first met at college. Someone who leads with empathy and loves his opponents. I thought that back in 2001.

In the end, the centre came to Newsom. But in most cases, he’s a pro-business, centrist democrat. Which is not a place where much political energy exists, in a world divided between far right and far left. Most of us centrists are staying safely at home, grumbling about the sorry state of affairs in pieces for The Independent. It’s rare to find a centrist with fire inside him. One who is fearless enough to taunt Trump with mockery on social media, and invite Steve Bannon onto his podcast.

I didn’t think a Northern California wine owner with slicked-back hair and an inability to reach the top buttons of his shirt would be the Democrats’ best presidential nominee. But he might be. I don’t think he’ll be the leader of the free world, but only because I’m not sure there will be a free world. I have given up on the idea of a free world. At least for now.