By MIKE MAGEE
Last week, Donald Trump decided to get into a war of words with a person with dyslexia. Their target was California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has battled a learning disability since he was 5 years old.
The president’s action was premeditated and aimed at taking down the potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender. It got pretty personal pretty quickly. Trump was direct as is his way. He said simply: “Everything about him is stupid.”
In response, the governor expanded the conversation to include young Americans with this condition with these specific words of encouragement: “To all children with learning disabilities: don’t let anyone, not even the president of the United States, bully you. Dyslexia is not a weakness. It is your strength.”
Trump seemed surprised by the consequences of his “silly” comment. This provoked a severe reprimand 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 dyslexic, author and political commentator, Molly Jong Fastquickly connected the political dots with 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 for the future, to see second or third order effects is his undoing (see: this war he has gotten us into).”
like him Yale Experts Bottom line: “Reading is complex. It requires our brain to connect letters to sounds, put those sounds in the correct order, and put words together into sentences and paragraphs that we can read and understand. People with dyslexia have trouble matching the letters they see on the page with the sounds those letters and letter combinations make. And when they have trouble with that step, all the other steps are more difficult.”
Neuroscientists couldn’t agree more. The language is really complicated. At least five areas have been identified that play a role in coordinating the human capacity for language and speech.
For dyslexics, it is a problem with language processing. Learning disabilities vary widely and can include difficulties with word recognition, arithmetic, spelling, writing, reading, and word and symbol recognition. Together, these difficulties often result in deficits in organization, motor skills, visual discernment, planning, social interaction, and short-term memory. A common early sign is delayed literacy.
Gavin has been nothing less than an open book when it comes to dyslexia. On tour in promotion of his new memoirs, “Young man in a hurry: a memoir of discovery” Last month, he revealed the challenge of being a politician unable to read a speech. Recently, in Atlanta, he said, “I’m no better than you. You know, I’m a 960 SAT guy.”
Ironically, Gavin’s current critic has his own learning problems. In 2019, Professor Harriet Feinberg Ed.D of the Harvard Graduate School of Education closely examined the linguistic behavior of Trump’s first term and concluded that “dyslexia may explain a lot about the president’s devious behavior.”
Feinberg pegs Trump’s reading level at fifth grade: “enough to tweet and follow a teleprompter, but not enough to understand a fairly long article in the Wall Street Journal… She could never have read her textbooks at the Wharton School. Someone would have had to read it aloud to her or create bullet points for her to get the main ideas.”
In dr. In Feinberg’s experience, dyslexia does not predict the destiny of each individual. Personality has a great impact on future results. Because Trump wasn’t up to par as a kid and probably started faking it when he was 6 or 7 and never stopped. Early failures were covered up, paved over, and protected by wealth and family connections.
Dr. Feinberg summarized succinctly his assessment during Trump’s first term. She said he probably “faked and faked his way to fame and power and enjoys dominating so-called ‘smart’ people and frustrating their hopes. I am suggesting that Trump’s lifelong experience with dyslexia, rather than increasing his capacity for compassion, has combined with problematic elements in his personality, including a tendency toward revenge that was evident even as a young adult.”
Attacking Gavin Newsom for an inherited disability that the governor had the courage to reveal has backfired on a president already under siege. Fakeness, grandiosity and cruelty work well for a media personality. But ruling a nation by neglecting experience and knowledge, rejecting deep cultural experience and diplomacy (while surrounding yourself with loyal sycophants whom you enjoy publicly torturing as you once did in the schoolyard or under the gaze of your faux televised boardroom) is clearly not a recipe for success.
According to Dr. Feinberg, dyslexia is the key to solving the mystery surrounding Donald Trump, a boy with a penchant for revenge. Summing up, he explains: “Because it was so difficult for him to learn from books, coupled with his unwillingness to listen to people with deep knowledge and alternative perspectives, it fueled resentment and distrust…he exhibits a combative complacency, a receptivity to dangerous and unworkable ideas, an admiration for dictators, and an almost savage destructive impulse that is causing serious ongoing damage to our society. democracy.
Mike Magee MD is a medical historian and regular contributor to THCB. He is the author of CODE BLUE: Inside the United States medical-industrial complex. (Greet/2020)
