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By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service<\/a>, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy<\/a> such as personalizing your experience and ads. <\/p>\n SACRAMENTO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0President Trump claims Gov. Gavin Newsom is unfit to be president because he has a \u201clearning disability.\u201d<\/a> It\u2019s a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.<\/p>\n The centuries-old pot-kettle idiom points out hypocrisy \u2014 as when one person accuses another of a flaw that afflicts himself.<\/p>\n California\u2019s governor has battled dyslexia all his life \u2014 very successfully,<\/a> by any measure. Dyslexia is a learning disability that makes reading and writing difficult. But it doesn\u2019t mean a stricken person is unable to learn. He just needs to learn differently, as Newsom has done since he was a teen.<\/p>\n Trump apparently isn\u2019t dyslexic. But he clearly has some learning disabilities \u2014 including stubbornness, narrow-mindedness and intolerance.<\/p>\n The president still hasn\u2019t learned, for example, that he lost the 2020 election. He persists in the belief \u2014 or maybe it\u2019s merely another boldface lie \u2014 that the election was stolen in a Joe Biden conspiracy. That\u2019s a bizarre fantasy.<\/p>\n He also didn\u2019t learn from past administrations that a commander in chief should not wage war against Iran without a concrete plan to keep open the Strait of Hormuz so Middle Eastern oil can keep flowing to the world.<\/p>\n And he never has learned what most of us were taught by our parents: that you don\u2019t berate your friends if you expect to keep them friendly \u2014 lashing out, for instance, at allies before and after their balking at sending warships to help protect the vital strait.<\/p>\n Moreover, he didn\u2019t learn that the nation\u2019s founders embedded a checks-and-balances governing system in the Constitution and that Congress has a role in imposing tariffs.<\/p>\n When the normally Trump-friendly Supreme Court ruled against his unilateral tariff agenda, the spoiled president did what he usually does: attack, insulting the justices who struck down his edicts.<\/p>\n \u201cFools,\u201d \u201clapdogs\u201d and a \u201cdisgrace to our nation,\u201d he whined. \u201cIt\u2019s an embarrassment to their families.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump still hasn\u2019t learned to shut up and try to be civilized.<\/p>\n Not even after shocking everyone by saying of the late Republican Sen. John McCain, a Navy Pilot who spent more than five years as a tortured POW in the Hanoi Hilton: \u201cHe\u2019s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren\u2019t captured.\u201d<\/p>\n Any respect I might have had for the guy vanished in 2015 when the then-candidate for president publicly mocked a New York Times reporter\u2019s disability. At a campaign rally, Trump jerked his arms and flailed his hands while making fun of the reporter\u2019s palsy-like ailment.<\/p>\n So it wasn\u2019t a surprise recently when Trump tore into Newsom for his dyslexia four times in one week.<\/p>\n Yes, Newsom has his eye on the 2028 presidential election and has been scoring points nationally with Democratic activists by using Trump as a punching bag. But Trump keeps offering himself up as an irresistible target.<\/p>\n Regardless, there\u2019s no excuse \u2014 even in hard knocks politics \u2014 for attacking someone because of his disability.<\/p>\n \u201cGavin Newscum\u201d \u2014 Trump\u2019s synonym for the governor \u2014 \u201dhas admitted he has learning disabilities, dyslexia,\u201d he told reporters in the Oval Office. \u201cHonestly, I\u2019m all for people with learning disabilities but not for my president.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEverything about him is dumb,\u201d Trump added.<\/p>\n In a Fox News Radio interview, Trump said that \u201cpresidents can\u2019t have a learning disability.\u201d And on Facebook, Trump wrote: \u201cI don\u2019t want the president of the United States to have a cognitive deficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n A quick Google search could have shown Trump that several presidents have had learning disabilities, including dyslexia.<\/p>\n Start with George Washington, who struggled with grammar and spelling. And Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, who had trouble with reading and spelling.<\/p>\n Other presidents with learning disabilities: Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. \u201cIt\u2019s a poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word,\u201d Jackson asserted.<\/p>\n Scientist Albert Einstein was dyslexic. So were Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison.<\/p>\n Dyslexia affects roughly one in five Americans to some degree \u2014 more than 40 million people, although relatively few are aware of it, according to researchers.<\/p>\n Newsom has spoken openly for years <\/a>about his struggles with dyslexia. It\u2019s difficult for him to read, especially prepared speeches. So he reads and re-reads, underlines and highlights and meticulously takes notes. When a speech must be read off a teleprompter, he practices for hours.<\/p>\n In January, the governor began his State of the State address to the Legislature with this ad-lib:<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not shy or, you know, embarrassed about my 960 SAT score. But I am a little bit about my inability to read the written [speech] text. And so it\u2019s always been something that I have to work through and I\u2019m confronting.\u201d<\/p>\n In his recently released autobiography, \u201cYoung Man in a Hurry,\u201d Newsom writes: \u201cMy high school grades were all over the place and I scored lousy on the SAT, three hours of dyslexic torture.\u201d<\/p>\n Early in his political career as a San Francisco supervisor, he writes, \u201cspeaking to a crowd was not unlike the fear I felt in third grade reading to my classmates \u2026. So I learned to memorize my talking points and best lines \u2026 and wing it from there.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is how I discovered one of the secret powers of dyslexia. I could read a room with the best of them. I\u2019d walk in and immediately size up the faces, mood and manners. … I learned that an audience didn\u2019t mind occasional hiccups of speech as long as you looked them in the eye.\u201d<\/p>\n Newsom was twice elected mayor and twice governor.<\/p>\n None of this means he should necessarily be elected president.<\/p>\n There may be policy and political reasons to consider him unfit \u2014 but not because of any learning disability.<\/p>\n What else you should be reading<\/p>\n The must-read: <\/b>Newsom leads Harris for president among California Democrats, poll finds<\/a> Until next week,
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George Skelton<\/p>\n