President Trump slammed California Gov. Gavin Newsom as unfit for the White House because he has “mental problems” in a thinly veiled reference to Joe Biden.
Speaking at an event in northern Kentucky on Wednesday, Trump said the governor “admitted he has mental problems, that he’s not a smart person.”
In his memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry,” Newsom wrote about his struggle with dyslexia, a common learning disability.
“He’s unable to read a speech, he can’t read, and all of the other things he said. He said he has a lot of mental problems,” Trump said of Newsom.
“Nothing’s wrong with it, but I don’t want the President of the United States to have a cognitive deficiency,” Trump said.
“When he admitted this, I said, I think he just lost the Democrat nomination,” he added.
Newsom fired back the president in a post on his press office’s X account, sharing a clip of Trump’s remarks while adding a similar jibe.
“Grandpa’s talking about himself again. We wish him well — it’s never too late to seek mental treatment,” the post read.
Newsom revealed in the past that he was diagnosed with dyslexia in 1972, when he was around 5 years old.
The diagnosis was thrust back into the spotlight after he mentioned the disorder at an event in Atlanta last month while promoting his new memoir.