President Trump unloaded on California Gov. Gavin Newsom Wednesday night, calling the Democrat's recent public remarks "the most self-destructive interview I've ever seen" and declaring his 2028 presidential ambitions dead on arrival.
Writing on Truth Social, Trump seized on a weekend appearance Newsom made in Atlanta while promoting his forthcoming memoir, a book tour that has taken the governor through several states, including early presidential primary state South Carolina, in what has been widely viewed as positioning for a future White House bid.
In one fell swoop, he took himself out of even being considered as the Presidential Nominee of the Crazy Democrats.
Trump's verdict was blunt. But the remarkable thing is that Trump wasn't the only one who noticed. The backlash came from across the political spectrum and from voices that rarely overlap.
During his Atlanta stop, Newsom attempted to relate to Mayor Andre Dickens and others in the audience by discussing his own academic challenges. The governor leaned into a self-deprecating routine that landed very differently than he intended.
I'm not trying to impress you, I'm just trying to impress upon you, I'm like you. I'm not better than you. I'm a 960 SAT guy.
You've never seen me read a speech because I cannot read a speech.
Consider the setting. A wealthy white governor from California stood before a predominantly Black audience in Atlanta and told them he was "like them" because he scored poorly on standardized tests and struggles to read. According to 2024 College Board data cited by the New York Post, the average SAT score for Black students is 907 out of 1,600, compared with 1,083 for white students.
Newsom's 960 sits right between those two averages. He chose to present that number as a bridge to a Black audience.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas called Newsom's approach the "soft bigotry of low expectations." Rep. Randy Fine of Florida called the remarks "disgusting." Those are predictable Republican responses. What wasn't predictable was who joined them.
Rapper Nicki Minaj criticized Newsom on X, writing that his "way of bonding with black ppl is to tell them how stupid he is & that he can't read." When a Republican senator and one of the biggest names in hip-hop arrive at the same conclusion independently, the problem isn't partisan spin. The problem is what was said.
Trump captured the political dimension on Truth Social:
He said, in a speech, he was dumb, had low Boards, can't read, has dyslexia, and has a mental disorder — A Cognitive Mess
This was a politically suicidal act.
Newsom later posted a longer clip of the exchange on X and defended his comments by emphasizing his lifelong struggle with dyslexia, Newsmax reported.
My mom didn't want my dyslexia to hold me back.
Dyslexia is real, and no one serious is mocking anyone for having it. But that's not what drew the criticism. The issue was never Newsom's learning disability. The issue was that he walked into a room full of Black Americans and assumed that presenting himself as academically limited would make them feel a kinship with him. The condescension is structural. The dyslexia defense doesn't touch it.
This is a pattern with a certain kind of progressive politician. They speak about minority communities in terms of deficiency rather than aspiration. They assume shared struggle where none exists and, in doing so, reveal what they actually think about the people they claim to champion. The left calls this allyship. Everyone else recognizes it as patronizing.
Newsom's book tour through early primary states isn't subtle. He wants the Democratic nomination. He has the fundraising network, the national media profile, and the hair. What he may no longer have is the ability to connect with the multiracial coalition that any Democratic nominee needs to assemble.
Trump called him "no longer a viable Presidential Candidate." That's a political opponent's assessment, but the underlying math is hard to argue with. If your introductory pitch to Black voters generates bipartisan revulsion, including from cultural figures with enormous reach in the very communities you need, your coalition math has a serious problem before the first vote is cast.
Newsom governed California through rolling disasters: wildfires, homelessness, an exodus of residents and businesses. He has treated each crisis as a communications challenge rather than a governance failure. The Atlanta episode suggests he'll bring the same instincts to a presidential campaign. Style over substance, performance over connection, and an unshakable belief that the right words can substitute for the right policies.
The right words, it turns out, weren't even the right words.