Republican senators who are parents of children with dyslexia pushed back on President Donald Trump’s comments President Donald Trump said people with learning disabilities should not ever be commander in chief.
Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was stunned Wednesday to learn from a reporter about his words.
“Should my son not run for president?” the moderate, who voted to convict Trump after Jan. 6 and has from time to time criticized him, responded to The Independent. Murkowski said her son has dyslexia.
“He’s one of the smartest guys I know,” she said of her son. “I guess again, sometimes you’ve got to look at it in the context in which he said it, but I do not believe that those with a level of disability should automatically be excluded from being president.”
On Monday, Trump spoke in the Oval Office where he commented on California Gov. Gavin Newsom having dyslexia and said that people who have learning disabilities should not run for office.
“Honestly, I’m all for people with learning disabilities, but not for my president,” Trump told reporters. “I think a president should not have learning disabilities.”
During his remarks, Trump referred to Newsom by his oft-used derisive moniker for him: “Newscum.”
“I know it’s highly controversial to say such a horrible thing,” Trump said, adding that “everything about him is dumb.”
Newsom has been open about the fact that he has dyslexia. After Trump’s remarks, the governor pushed back.
“To every kid with a learning disability: don’t let anyone — not even the President of the United States — bully you,” he said. “Dyslexia isn’t a weakness. It’s your strength.”
But Murkowski wasn’t alone in Republican criticism. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, pushed back on Trump’s comments.
“Well, probably somebody with dyslexia and learning disability has been president,” Cassidy, a doctor, told The Independent. Cassidy has a daughter with dyslexia.
He also added that dyslexia affects about 20 percent of the population.
“Certainly there are people who are CEOs and famous physicians and reportedly even Albert Einstein,” he said. “So I think that the idea that someone with dyslexia cannot achieve any goal that he or she wishes to achieve is wrong. They absolutely can.”
Cassidy’s wife Laura also helped start the Louisiana Key Academy, a series of public charter schools for students with dyslexia.
“They can achieve whatever they want,” he said.
Before and during his presidency, Trump has frequently denigrated people with disabilities, baselessly blaming the airplane crash in the Potomac River early last year on a hiring program for people with intellectual disabilities within the Federal Aviation Administration.
He also has repeated the debunked claim that childhood vaccinations cause autism spectrum disorder and last year, said that the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy could cause children to become autistic.
Murkowski has occasionally broken from the president during his second tenure in the White House. She voted against the confirmation of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth because of his comments on whether women could serve in combat roles.
She also was one of the first two Republican senators alongside retiring Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina to say that Kristi Noem should resign as secretary of Homeland Security.
At the same time, she has regularly voted with Trump, voting to confirm some of his more controversial nominees such as Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
She also voted to pass Trump’s signature “One Big, Beautiful Bill” legislation that beefed up spending for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and extended the 2017 tax cuts Trump signed after she received significant concessions.
