President Donald Trump is once again attacking California Governor Gavin Newsom over his well-documented struggle with dyslexia, claiming the condition should bar the Democrat from ever becoming president.
“Honestly, I’m all for people with learning disabilities, but not for my president,” Trump said on Monday when speaking with reporters at the White House. “I think a president should not have learning disabilities.”
“I know it’s highly controversial to say such a horrible thing,” Trump added, claiming that when it came to the “low IQ” governor, whom he has dubbed “Gavin Newscum,” that “everything about him is dumb.”
During his insults, President Trump referred to Newsom as already being “the president of the United States,” a slip-up Newsom later mocked online.
“NO THANK YOU, WE BELIEVE IN FREE ELECTIONS!” the California leader wrote on X.
Trump’s insults came the same day he announced a task force cracking down on alleged benefits fraud, including in California. Similar allegations of mass fraud preceded the deadly immigration operation in Minneapolis earlier this year.
Critics of the president said Trump’s remarks on Monday about Newsom are inappropriate and offensive.
“Regarding millions of Americans with disabilities, Trump once again shows his profound ignorance,” California journalist Carla Marinucci wrote on X.
“President Trump is right,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement. “Gavin Newscum is the worst governor in America, and he also may be the dumbest.”
The president’s attacks were similar to criticisms Trump lobbed at Newsom last week during a rally in Kentucky.
“He admitted he has mental problems, that he’s not a smart person…that he is unable to read a speech,” Trump told supporters in Hebron. “I don’t want the president of the United States to have a cognitive deficiency.”
“Too late,” Newsom replied online, a reference to the long-running claim from Trump critics that the president is mentally unsound, which the president denies.
After the comments, The Independent reporter Eric Garcia, who is autistic and a nationally recognized commentator on disability issues, pointed to the president’s long history of derogatory disability-related remarks, including an infamous 2015 incident where Trump mockingly imitated a disabled reporter with a congenital joint condition. Trump has said he wasn’t mocking the reporter’s disability but rather that the journalist was “flustered.”
“Blatant and disgusting ableism on the level of Trump mocking Serge Kovaleski, the New York Times reporter, and him calling [Minnesota Governor] Tim Walz the r-word,” Garcia wrote on X. “It is on the absolute same level.”
Newsom, who has been traveling around the country promoting a new memoir ahead of a potential 2028 president run, has slammed Trump for feeding into “MAGA-manufactured outrage.”
Conservatives claimed Newsom was being racist at a recent appearance in Atlanta when he told a crowd, which included Black audience members, that he was “like you” for getting a middling SAT score.
“You didn’t give a s*** about the President of the United States of America posting an ape video of President Obama or calling African nations s***holes — but you’re going to call me racist for talking about my lifelong struggle with dyslexia?” Newsom wrote in response to one such criticism, from Fox News host Sean Hannity. “Spare me your fake f****** outrage.”
Newsom and Trump have long been foes on the national stage, sparring in court over issues including immigration tactics and publicly over Trump’s threats to withhold wildfire aid.
The tension has only increased over the last year, with Newsom adopting Trump’s signature biting social media style.
