Guys, I hope you are sitting down. I have shocking news to tell you.
Are you ready?
I don’t think a politician is being completely honest with us.
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) February 23, 2026
Recently, Gavin Newsom has been telling everyone who can hear that he is dyslexic and, therefore, he cannot read.
Now, first off, I am dyslexic. And I also have dysgraphia and Attention Deficit Disorder (without hyperactivity), but we will focus mainly on the dyslexia for now. Having spoken with many dyslexics over the years, it is pretty clear that there are various degrees of it and, frankly, I have one of the lighter versions. For me, it means that I read slower than I should and I sometimes switch words and letters when I read or write. For instance, to this day, I can’t spell ‘friend’ reliably without the help of a computer, because my brain keeps switching the I and E so often, neither spelling looks right to me.
But I know dyslexics who have much more severe cases of dyslexia, to the point that they literally can’t read at all. So, at first, Newsom’s claim that he couldn’t read seemed plausible even if he was using it in a way that seemed kind of nakedly political. It started when he threw a hissy fit when Senator Ted Cruz called him ‘historically illiterate,’ and Newsom’s response was so bad he got a rightful community note over it, as Sam covered here:
Ted Cruz calling a dyslexic person illiterate is a new low, even for him. https://t.co/XC75ybiGKd
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) February 16, 2026
Then he told an audience that he can’t read, which supposedly made him like his black interviewer:
.@GavinNewsom Thinks a 960 SAT Makes Him 'Like' Black Americans. Let That Sink In. pic.twitter.com/6tOo7L3fqr
— Sean Hannity 🇺🇸 (@seanhannity) February 23, 2026
When Sean Hannity called him out for that, Newsom flipped out, using some naughty, naughty words, so we will only quote him with censorship, but you can read the original remarks, here:
You didn’t give a s—t about the President of the United States of America posting an ape video of President Obama or calling African nations s—tholes — but you’re going to call me racist for talking about my lifelong struggle with dyslexia?
Spare me your fake f—king outrage, Sean.
Well, first off, the ‘the ape video of President Obama’ was a split-second moment from a video. I can't embed the original tweet that had the video, but I link to it, here:
Y’all don’t get it. This is a master troll from Trump. He takes a second long clip from Lion King parody video that makes all the democrats look like animals—including Hakeem Jeffries as a meerkat—knowing you would all call him racist. Watch for yourself, here… https://t.co/FSQ8QBmTae pic.twitter.com/eVRg54KOIX
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) February 6, 2026
Just hit 'show more' and you should see the link.
As you can see from the video, it shows lots of different politicians portrayed as different kind of animals. For instance, another prominent politician, Hakeem Jeffries as a meerkat. Does Newsom think that black people are stereotyped as meerkats? And Joe Biden is shown as a baboon, as best as I can tell. Or maybe it is a mandrill, like Rafiki in the Lion King. Either way, that would be a white guy portrayed as a kind of monkey, which we thought was only done to black people! So, the claim that this is racist falls apart when you look into it.
As for calling countries… um.. crapholes? Well, while I believe that all people are created equal, all countries are not. I believe that America is the greatest country on Earth and some are so far below it that I might consider them crapholes. For instance, I happen to think China is one, even as I count people of Chinese descent as friends (and family). But once again, Democrats are unable to separate people from their country of origin—just as FDR couldn’t when he tried to lock up every Japanese American. And yet I was told there was some kind of party switch…
But more basically, you can talk about having a disability without being racist. And even if Trump himself was racist and Hannity was excusing that racism (they weren't), that doesn’t absolve Newsom of his racism.
Still, that got me thinking and suddenly I remembered that I had seen the supposedly illiterate Gavin Newsom reading, somewhere. And while I didn’t find the exact image in my mind, I found this:
Reading some banned books to figure out what these states are so afraid of. pic.twitter.com/z6eJ01NZJe
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) March 31, 2022
Oh, isn’t that interesting?
Never mind that these books were not actually banned. More than likely he means they were not placed in libraries, which is a subsidy for books. A failure to subsidize something does not amount to a ban, or else we could say that the government is banning me from having a Ferrari, because it has not given me a free one—or at least the government hasn’t loaned one to me, like a book in a library.
(And the ‘bans’ on ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ are typically based on racial sensitivity, because that book has a bunch of uses of the n-word—as you would expect from a story about racism in the segregated South in the bad old days when Democrats ran the place. I thought leftists supported racial sensitivity, trigger warnings, safe spaces and all that?)
But there he is, purporting to read a book, when he said he couldn’t read speeches.
Hey, but maybe he was just pretending to read, like King Shark in ‘The Suicide Squad’ (not to be confused with ‘Suicide Squad’):
And maybe he was doing it again, in this article:
— BaconBits8654 (@BaconBits8654) October 26, 2025
If you can’t get past the paywall, this is what you will see:
That is Gavin "I can't read" Newsom, appearing to read a newspaper on the left, in high school. Source: https://t.co/fnGFDwTcnx pic.twitter.com/GtOuYKBA4L
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) February 24, 2026
‘Maybe he was faking reading even back then,’ my imaginary Devil’s Advocate might say.
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) February 24, 2026
Here he is on Good Morning America, talking about his dyslexia, because he wrote a children’s book about it:
Right off the bat, he claims that he learned about his dyslexia by reading about it. As in, his mother was out of the house, he was looking around her room and found some files on himself saying that he was dyslexic. And crucially, he says he also seemed to have issues with attention—which I suspect is ADD. As in either he is trying to avoid admitting he has ADD, or perhaps he wasn’t even diagnosed with it, but an inattention was noted.
But he claims he can’t read … speeches, and he only uses the teleprompter on one speech every year, the State of the State speech he gives to the California legislature.
And by the way, in the same interview and in other places he constantly talks about family members with dyslexia, which shouldn’t be surprising since it does run in the family. But it isn’t right that he is doing that. A person with a hidden disability has a right to keep it hidden and most actual learning disabled people get that. We tend to know many, many other people with such disabilities and most of us never reveal it without their consent. And Gavin Newsom doesn’t seem to get this when talking about transgender issues, either, but children can’t consent! So, he is outing his own children without their consent. Disgusting.
Then we have an interview from eight years ago, with some kid who apparently is dyslexic himself, and Newsom says some interesting things:
He repeats the story that he learned about his dyslexia by finding papers saying that when he was young and then he says at about 3:20 mark that he would be ‘in the corner complaining, and not able to read, and faking it.’
So that suggests maybe he does fake reading… but anyone else noticing the paradox? He can’t read he says, and he found out that he had dyslexia by finding some files on himself and … reading them.
Then past the 4 minute mark, he says he can’t read a script and that the only time he has to read a speech is during the Democratic conventions. Now, at that point in time he was only the Lieutenant Governor of California, so he presumably wouldn’t be giving ‘State of the State’ speeches, but its funny how in the prior video, he didn’t mention reading off the teleprompter at Democratic conventions.
By the way, he claimed that they made him use a teleprompter. Couldn’t he have asked for an accommodation for his disability? Or did he ask, and everyone refused to do it? For that matter, why can’t the governor of the state demand an accommodation when he gives the ‘State of the State’ speech?
At around the 4:40 mark he claims again that he couldn’t read.
And at around the 6:30 mark he starts talking about how he does read when he has to, and … frankly, it sounds more like his problem is an attention deficit disorder type issue—perhaps with hyperactivity—than dyslexia because he constantly talks about how hard it is to keep his mind from wandering and he has to use various techniques to retain the information.
For the record, as I said before I have ADD without hyperactivity. He is right to say that part of the human mind can help compensate. Science shows that a great deal of the mind is like a muscle—although strangely the parts directly effected by my disabilities don’t improve. But in my case, the result is very different. In my case, I read slower but I typically only need to read a thing once—I compensate with enhanced comprehension the first time around so I don’t need to read it twice. I do believe my memory has been enhanced, but I don’t credit the dyslexia. I credit the dysgraphia. As I mentioned, it affects my ability to write by hand but when I use my laptop computer, the disability is essentially neutralized. But I didn’t have a laptop until 1995, when I started college. Up until then, I had to get through classes without taking notes and I believe my memory grew stronger to compensate.
Incidentally, at about 10:20 he tries to suggest he was just a poor boy growing up, which has also been kind of undermined by the facts.
And even as I was writing this, I found where someone else was starting to notice the same inconsistency:
Why does Gavin Newsom‘s literacy seem to be audience dependent?
— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) February 23, 2026
Gavin Newsom: I can’t read.
Also Gavin Newsom: I read your 260 page book in less than two hours. pic.twitter.com/hC40kF8xGl
Bluntly, with my relatively light version of dyslexia, I would struggle to read that much that quickly.
So, what we have here is Newsom being at best, extremely inconsistent about his ability to read. Sometimes he says he can’t at all. And sometimes he says he can’t read speeches, except when he wants to really bad, and he isn’t even consistent about which speeches qualify for his exception.
And there are real questions about his diagnosis:
Gavin Newsom has frequently described himself as dyslexic, presenting it as part of a personal narrative in which he worked hard to overcome adversity.
— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) February 17, 2026
According to his story, he was diagnosed at age five but did not learn of it until years later, when he discovered documents…
The cut off text:
According to his story, he was diagnosed at age five but did not learn of it until years later, when he discovered documents among his mother’s belongings that included the word ‘dyslexia.’
However, it would have been unusual for a 5 year old to receive a formal dyslexia diagnosis in 1972. While some researchers used the term at that time, systematic screening programs didn’t exist and early childhood diagnosis was uncommon. Children with reading difficulties were not identified until deficits became apparent in later grades, and then, they were typically described as having a reading delay rather than labeled ‘dyslexic.’
Newsom has said that he rediscovered these childhood records in recent years, after his parents died. Given that he uses this diagnosis for political purposes, I think it’s reasonable to ask for corroboration.
Now, I was actually born in 1972. I was first diagnosed with dysgraphia when I was eight—so that would have been around 1980-81. This was in Texas which was actually pretty far ahead of the curve on these issues back then. They didn’t catch my dyslexia or ADD until I was fifteen years old (I was in North Carolina at the time). Missing the ADD when I was eight was not surprising, because people didn’t really know much about that condition back then. It is more surprising they missed my dyslexia back when I was eight because that was better known at the time than dysgraphia. My working theory was that they missed the dyslexia because I was also very nearsighted and they attributed any reading problems to that—and to be fair, it was probably part of the problem.
I mentioned this to Ms. Powell and the fact that it was a subject of an episode of ‘The Love Boat’ and she found that the episode in question aired in 1984:
LOL. I looked it up. 1984. pic.twitter.com/PZ6ncSpAWy
— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) February 17, 2026
I cannot remember why they were diagnosing learning disabilities while on a horny cruise ship, but oh well.
Ms. Powell has other questions, about Mr. Newsom’s story:
I just noticed that descriptions of his upcoming memoir mention his struggles with "undiagnosed dyslexia," despite having stated countless times that he was diagnosed at age 5.
— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) February 18, 2026
So he overcame the hardship of being unable to read as a toddler? 😆 pic.twitter.com/k5HI09yOsM
And as our own Warren we told you last night, that led Susan Crabtree to ask Newsom’s comms team for documentation of Newsom’s dyslexia which resulted in a response of ‘f—k off.’
Most learning disabled people are used to people asking for proof. And frankly, most politicians should be used to providing proof of any claim they make on any subject. If I was the governor of a state and telling people over and over I was learning disabled, and they asked for proof, I would give it to them. It might take a day or two to dig out the diagnosis, but I could do it. And I wouldn’t mind doing it—it’s a fair question to ask.
So why are they being so cagey about this? This is the most basic follow up question Newsom could be asked and they can’t even politely say ‘no?’
His behavior is strange at best.
Update: Judge Rules on Evicting Residents Because Maryland Police Wouldn’t Clean up a Homeless Camp
BREAKING: Supreme Court Rules on Trump’s Tariffs
They DO Have Prince Andrew in the Can! Former Royal Arrested
BREAKING: An NYT Interview With Biden Just Undermined Thousands of His Late Pardons (A Deep Dive)
