California Governor Says Trump Destroyed '80 Years Of Alliances'

California Governor Gavin Newsom accused US President Donald Trump on Thursday of destroying alliances forged at the end of the Second World War, saying the United States had "become unrecognisable in a matter of months".

It came a day after Newsom, a leading opposition figure in the United States who is considered a potential presidential candidate in 2028, urged European leaders to "develop a backbone" and "push back very aggressively" on Trump's bid to take over Greenland.

"It's a remarkable thing to break down 80-plus years of alliances," Newsom said in an address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday.

"It takes decades and decades to build trust and organisations," he said. "It takes weeks, tweets, hours, minutes, sometimes, to destroy it."

"Destruction is not strength. The Trump administration is weakness disguised as strength."

The US president rocked the transatlantic NATO alliance with his bid to seize Greenland, threatening to slap tariffs on European countries that opposed the move.

But Trump rowed back Wednesday on his threat to forcefully seize the strategic Arctic island, and said he would not impose sanctions on European nations that pushed back.

He instead announced a vague deal aimed at ensuring Greenland's security.

In a wide-ranging attack, Newsom accused Trump's administration of curbing freedoms in the United States, citing the president's mass deportation push.  

He branded the Trump administration as having "authoritarian tendencies", saying: "There's no rule of law. It's the rule of Don."

"We could lose our republic as we know it. Our country has become unrecognisable in a matter of months, not just years," Newsom said.

Still, Newsom suggested that a future US administration could repair international relations.

"There's always going back," he said. 

"I think these relationships are in dormancy. They're not dead."

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)