Dyslexia – Newsom vs. Trump

Posted on | March 24, 2026 | 1 Comment

Mike Magee

Under President Trump, learning disabilities – especially discussions related to syntax and the quality of language in general – have risen to epic proportions. In a recent “tit for tat” that pitted the Governor of California against the President of the United States, the language disability, dyslexia, received a thorough press airing.

Governor Gavin Newsom has been generally aware of his language learning disability since the age of 5. But over the past month, perhaps in part to address the issue before a 2028 Presidential run, he’s been leaning into his diagnosis of dyslexia stating: “To every kid with a learning disability: don’t let anyone — not even the President of the United States — bully you. Dyslexia isn’t a weakness. It’s your strength.”

His swipe at Trump didn’t come out of nowhere. Over the past week, Trump has attempted to cut his competition down to size by challenging him on cognitive terms, not once or twice but three times. Not that the critique was particularly erudite. This past week, the president simply said, “Everything about him is dumb.” That drew a stern rebuke from the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity which reminded the President that approximately 20% of the US population is challenged by some form of this condition.

Fellow dyslectic, author and political commentator, Molly Jong-Fast,connected the dots to current events: “Mr. Trump is a bully, but beyond that he tries to flatten things. Sometimes voters respond to this flattening, this simplification of complicated issues, but ultimately his refusal to see nuance in things, his inability to plan ahead, to see second- or third-order effects is his undoing (see: this war he has gotten us into).”

In contrast, experts at the Yale Center cites Governor Newsom as a “success story” in part the result of harnessing his unique approach to human language and speech, and life in general. As Newsom puts it, “One of the things you learn with dyslexia is that you’re going to fail often and you’ve got to appreciate that; as they say, failures are a portal of discovery.”

On tour in support of his new memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery” last month, he revealed the challenge of being a politician unable to read a speech. He made a point of telling his Atlanta audience, “I’m no better than you. You know, I’m a 960 SAT guy.”

Experts like K-12 educational leader, John White, former state superintendent of education in Louisiana, thinks leaning into language is a smart move. He sees fertile political ground, adding “Literacy is a complicated issue, not like cutting taxes or landing a new corporate headquarters.”

Scientists couldn’t agree more. Language is indeed complicated. At least five areas have been identified as role players in coordinating human capacity for language and speech. French neurologist and anthropologist, Paul Broca, in analyzing patients with traumatic brain injuries in 1861 was the first to pinpoint the inferior frontal gyrus as critical to speech or language articulation. These days, “Broca’s area”remains poorly understood but is viewed as one of the central processing centers for segmenting and codifying syllables, words and phrases.

Thirteen years after Broca’s observations, German physician Carl Wernicki (in 1874), while studying a patient with aphasia (the inability to speak), pinpointed several loci in the temporal lobe as critical to language comprehension. Subsequently, “Wernicki’s area” was proven essential to word retrieval, repetition and reading aloud.

Nowadays, Broca and Wernicki areas are seen as only part of a much broader and complex system. For example, for visual memory, verbal coding of numbers, and turning written language into spoken language, the angular gyrus is expert at semantic processing. And the insular cortex is the focus in generation of language and sound which requires motor neuron coordination and interlinks with the sensory and limbic brain areas.

Speech and language disorders come in many shapes and sizes. Injury to Broca’s area can interrupt speech production, while injury to Werniche’s area is often associated with loss of speech recognition. And the list goes on.

As for dyslexia, it’s a problem with language processing. The learning issues vary widely and can include difficulties with word recognition, numeracy, spelling, writing, reading, word and symbol recognition. Taken together, these difficulties often translate into deficits in organization, motor skills, visual discernment, planning, social interaction, and short term memory. A common early flag is delayed literacy.

As the Yale experts put it, “Reading is complex. It requires our brains to connect letters to sounds, put those sounds in the right order, and pull the words together into sentences and paragraphs we can read and comprehend. People with dyslexia have trouble matching the letters they see on the page with the sounds those letters and combinations of letters make. And when they have trouble with that step, all the other steps are harder.”

But as Gavin Newsom reminds all in his travels around the nation, if someone calls you dumb, consider the source. Victimhood is a choice. Instead, the Governor of California promotes self-awareness and personal responsibility.