Trump is attacking Newsom again for having dyslexia, saying it makes him unfit to be president

WASHINGTON – President Trump once again made fun of Gov’s dyslexia. Gavin Newsom as a “revocation” of leadership, marking at least the fourth time in a week that the president has targeted the California Democrat for going public about his diagnosis.

In his speech on Monday in the Oval Office, Trump said that Newsom is “dumb” and should never be allowed to be president because he “admitted that he has a learning disability, dyslexia.”

“That’s the kind of insanity a low IQ person gets,” Trump said. “Actually, I’m for people with learning disabilities but not my president. … And I know it’s very controversial to say such a bad thing.”

But in his moment of need, Trump mistakenly elevated his political rival to the position of commander-in-chief — again calling Newsom “the president of the United States.” Newsom took this opportunity to turn the tables on the president.

“I, GAVIN C. NEWSOM, AM OFFICIALLY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (THANKS DONALD!)” he tweeted on Monday.

The spat is the latest in an ironic bragging contest between Trump and Newsom, who have made a game of badmouthing each other at campaign rallies, in interviews and on social media.

The president has often cast Newsom as a symbol of the liberal governance he opposes, while the governor leans on controversies, often using them to boost his national image and position himself as a Democratic counterweight. His interview with the president appears to be part of an aggressive strategy to amplify his own messages as he considers a possible run for president in 2028. This time, Newsom used the image to support young people with dyslexia.

“To all children with learning disabilities: don’t let anyone—not even the President of the United States—bully you,” Newsom wrote in X. “Dyslexia is not a weakness. It is your strength.”

The insults first surfaced when a video of Newsom speaking at a book tour with Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens went viral as he discussed his lifelong struggle with learning disabilities. Since then, the president has been blowing the whistle on weakness.

Trump has brought up the governor’s dyslexia at least four times in the past week. He said this at a political rally in Kentucky last week, where he compared dyslexia to “lack of ability,” and repeated it during an interview with Fox News Radio on Friday, when he reiterated that “presidents cannot have a learning disability.” In a Truth Social post, Trump labeled Newsom’s admission “an act of political suicide,” calling him “dumb” and a “Cognitive Mess!”

After the Kentucky rally, Newsom responded to Trump.

“I talked about my dyslexia, I know it’s hard for a psychotic person who bombs children and protects abusers to understand,” he said.

Dyslexia affects about 20% of the population, according to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity. Despite affecting such a large part of the population, this condition is not widely understood, according to dyslexia researcher Dr. Helen Taylor of Cambridge University.

“In some ways, Trump’s negative comments are just a form of projection that is already at work in our culture,” she said. “If there is, [it’s] the opposite. There is evidence of over-representation of people with dyslexia in business leadership roles. ”

According to Taylor, there is a connection between dyslexia and “developed skills” in areas such as discovery, invention and creativity.

“It’s the same brain exchange that can make mundane tasks like learning the power of support more difficult to navigate the complex and guide teams to better future outcomes,” he said.

Newsom often describes his early experience with dyslexia as a source of insecurity growing up. In his memoir, the governor writes about his mother, Tessa Newsom, trying to help him with homework. The lessons ended with him “running out of the room crying saying I don’t know what’s going on with my mind.”

Back when Newsom was a boy in the 1970s, dyslexia was recognized but still not fully understood. He remembers a day when his mother got so worried that she took a deep breath and said to him, “It’s okay, Gavin.”

“I understood even then that this, too, came from his deep store of love for me,” Newsom wrote in his book “Young Man in a Hurry.” But I don’t remember any cruel words ever said about me.

The challenges of his learning disability continue to plague his career at the state Capitol. Newsom finds reading from a teleprompter challenging. His assistants describe days of painstaking preparation before major addresses to live audiences. Editing late in the speech, and the resulting changes to the words on the screen, threatens to throw off his speech.

All of the governor’s office memos are written in 12-point Century Gothic font with straight line spacing, formatting that aides say helps him with his disability.

The governor reads his daily briefing several times in the morning, underlining sentences and jotting down notes to store the information on yellow cards he keeps in his suit pockets.

He said the culture helps him compensate for his dyslexia and feel confident in speaking. But it also adds to the public’s perception of Newsom as a well-spoken, and sometimes rehearsed, politician. His extreme preparation has been a trait he considers his “superpower.”

His eagerness to learn and a desire to understand issues before he talks about them mean that he is often well prepared. According to him, the learning disability has revealed his inclination and resilience, and helped him sharpen other skills, such as reading the crowd quickly.

It also sharpened his memory.

At a news conference unveiling his 2020 budget proposal, a reporter asked the governor what he would do to address the 500,000 homes that were approved by California developers, but not yet built.

Without missing a beat, Newsom directed the reporter to the exact page of his 246-page budget that deals with this issue.

“Although people with dyslexia are slow readers, they are often, ironically, quick and intelligent people with strong thinking skills,” according to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity.

The governor’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, addressed the president’s attacks on Tuesday in a video on X where she insisted that “learning differences do not determine a person’s ability.” He listed a number of factors that he thought made him unfit to be president, including being a convicted felon, bankrupt businesses, having multiple ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and sending “masked fanatics to terrorize Black and white communities and tear children from their families.”

“Everything that Donald Trump stands for is beyond inappropriate,” she said. “Day after day, Trump says things that make him unfit for office. He degrades our vulnerable communities, our institutions, and even the Constitution itself.”

Two of Newsom’s four children have also been diagnosed with dyslexia.

Quinton reported from Washington, DC, again Luna from Sacramento.