California Gov. Gavin Newsom called on world leaders attending the Munich Security Conference in Germany to think about a future without President Donald Trump.
Newsom’s comments on climate policy reflected the larger theme of his message for Europe.
“I hope if there is nothing else I communicate today: Donald Trump is temporary. He’ll be gone in three years,” Newsom said.
Of Trump, Newsom encouraged leaders to “call this guy out” and stand up to the administration’s actions on the climate and beyond.
“I’m under assault and attack by this guy every single day. Here’s the president of the United States, he’s 80 years old and he’s calling me a nickname an 8-year-old called me,” Newsom said.
The California governor and potential 2028 presidential candidate was one of several potential White House hopefuls in Munich for the annual summit.
Lawmakers, aides and analysts told ABC News they planned to push an alternative to Trump’s aggressive and transactional foreign policy agenda.
Gov. Gavin Newsom takes part in a panel discussion during the 62nd Munich Security Conference, February 13, 2026 in Munich, Germany.
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In a post on X, Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Arizona, previewed his visit, writing: “I’m headed to the Munich Security Conference this weekend to talk about rebuilding alliances and restoring steady American leadership. To meet the threat of China, the world needs a partner it can count on again, not chaos.”
At last year’s gathering, Vice President JD Vance criticized European allies, accusing them of censoring right-wing political parties and not doing more to stop illegal migration.
Since then, Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs, repeated threats to seize Greenland and calls for NATO allies to spend more on security have forced longtime U.S. allies to question American commitments.
Trump has also more readily deployed the U.S. military abroad in his second term, striking three Iranian nuclear sites last June, and attacking Venezuela to capture its leader, Nicolas Maduro, in January.
“We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a speech in Davos, Switzerland, last month. “Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”
12 February 2026, Bavaria, Munich: The emblem of the security conference and the inscription “Munich Security Conference” can be seen on a flag on the facade of the Bayerischer Hof in Munich (Bavaria, Germany) on February 12, 2026. The 62nd Munich Security Conference (MSC) will take place from February 13 to 15, 2026 at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich. The MSC is the world’s leading forum for debates on international security policy. Photo: Matthias Balk/dpa (Photo by Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Picture Alliance/dpa/picture alliance via Getty I
Democrats will have to reaffirm their support for strong transatlantic ties while navigating European skepticism after Trump’s 2024 victory, Damian Murphy, a former Democratic foreign policy staffer and senior vice president of National Security at the Center for American Progress, told ABC News.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., urged democracies to embrace a “working class-centered politics” to “stave off the scourges of authoritarianism.”
“They are looking to withdraw the U.S. from the entire world so that we can turn into an age of authoritarianism, authoritarians that can carve up the world where Donald Trump can command the western hemisphere and Latin America as his personal sandbox, where Putin can saber rattle around Europe and try to bully around our own allies there, and for essentially authoritarians to have their own geographic domains,” she said.
US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat from New York (R), looks on in support of the DEFIANCE Act on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on January 22, 2026. The DEFIANCE Act is a proposed US law that would allow individuals to sue anyone who creates or shares fake, sexually explicit images or videos of them generated by artificial intelligence without their permission. (Photo by Alex WROBLEWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)
Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images
A progressive critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza, Ocasio-Cortez called for the United States, Europe and its allies to maintain their commitments to global alliances while stepping away from “hypocrisies.”
“Too often in the West, we look the other way for inconvenient populations to act out these paradoxes, whether it is kidnapping a foreign head of state, or threatening our allies to colonize Greenland, whether it is looking the other way in a genocide. Hypocrisies are vulnerabilities and they threaten democracies globally.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is leading the Trump administration’s delegation to Munich, called the summit “an important conference” and that other delegations “want honesty” and “want to know where we’re going, where we’d like to go with them.”
“We live in a new era in geopolitics, and it’s going to require all of us to sort of reexamine what that looks like and what our role is going to be,” he said.
Ocasio-Cortez made a similar point, acknowledging the next chapter of the post-World War II order.
“There have been many leaders who have said we will go back, and I think we have to recognize that we are in a new day and we are in a new time,” she said. “But that does not mean that the majority of Americans are ready to walk away from a rules-based order, and that we are ready to walk away from our commitment to democracy.”
Ocasio-Cortez couldn’t avoid questions that touched on a potential White House run.
“So when you run for president, are you going to impose a wealth tax or a billionaire’s tax?” the New York Times reporter moderating the panel asked her.
“I don’t think we have to wait for any one president to impose a wealth tax, I think that it needs to be done expeditiously,” Ocasio-Cortez said with a laugh.
ABC News’ Isabella Murray contributed to this report
