California Gov. Gavin Newsom took a sharp jab at President Donald Trump on Monday, mocking him with the suggestion that he struggles to read.
In a post on X, Newsom shared a video of Fox News host Jesse Watters discussing Newsom’s recent appearance in Atlanta for his book tour, where he discussed his dyslexia, telling the city’s Mayor Andre Dickens: “I’m not trying to impress you. I’m just trying to impress upon you: I’m like you. I’m no better than you. You know, I’m a 960 SAT guy.”
He added that because of his learning disability, he struggles to read prepared speeches and rarely relies on them. “Literally a 960 guy, I can’t—you’ve never seen me read a speech, because I cannot read a speech: maybe the wrong business to be in,” he said.
His comments quickly drew backlash from Trump allies and conservative media figures, who argued that the California governor—widely viewed as a potential 2028 presidential contender—was insulting Black Americans while attempting to describe the academic challenges he faced due to dyslexia.
That includes Watters, who said on his show: “I don’t want a president who scores poorly, I don’t want a president who struggles to read. I want a really smart president.”
But Newsom clapped back at Watters, writing in response: “Jesse, you already have one.”
Multiple reports and books have suggested that Trump struggles with reading.
A Washington Post report from 2018 noted that Trump rarely read the daily intelligence briefings he received, instead receiving oral briefings on only select intelligence issues.
Other reports have described Trump as someone who struggles with lengthy, text-heavy materials, instead favoring concise verbal updates and visually driven presentations.
For example, in 2018, The New York Times revealed that National Security Council staff were directed to limit policy documents to a single page and to rely heavily on visuals such as charts and maps. Around the same time, Mother Jones examined classified material suggesting that Trump’s intelligence briefings were only about one-quarter as long as those prepared for Barack Obama.
In the early days of his first presidency, he reinforced that preference in an interview with Axios, saying, “I like bullets, or I like as little as possible.”
Meanwhile, Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, which Trump has disputed the accuracy of, claimed: “He didn’t process information in any conventional sense. He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate.”
Wolff cites an email from economic adviser Gary Cohn that underscores internal frustration with the president’s engagement style. In it, Cohn writes: “It’s worse than you can imagine… Trump won’t read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers, nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.”
Meanwhile, A Very Stable Genius by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig also claimed that Trump struggled to read aloud, citing an instance where he found reading the U.S. Constitution difficult.
Trump has been seen slurring his words during speeches on multiple occasions, including a 2024 appearance in Los Angeles where he struggled to read a teleprompter.
While Trump has admitted that he doesn’t read extensively, in a 2017 interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, he said: “I love to read. I don’t get to read very much… I’m working very hard on lots of different things…”
Newsom’s latest attack on Trump is one of many in recent months as the California Governor prepares for a potential 2028 presidential run.
The California governor has mocked Trump’s leadership style and policy decisions, at times using memes and social media posts to ridicule the president.
Most recently, Newsom defended himself vigorously after conservative commentators seized on remarks he made about his own struggles with dyslexia, dismissing the backlash as “MAGA‑manufactured outrage.”
