I normally leave the reporting of the exploits of Gavin Newsom, California’s ridiculous governor and obvious 2028 presidential candidate, to Ellie Holmes, as she literally wrote the book on Newsom. But given this strange pattern that Newsom seems to be trapping himself in, I’m just going to have to invade Ellie’s space this one time. Gavin Newsom is turning into a slapstick comedy act. It’s like the Marx Brothers are reborn, except there’s only one of them. The first time around, there was Groucho, Harpo, and Chico — not to mention Gummo and Zeppo, who didn’t last for the whole ride. This time, we’re stuck with Neppo, who’s carrying the Marx moniker more out of ideological than familial reasons. And he’s Neppo, because if Gavin Newsom were the self-made man he claims, given his weird string of self-disqualifying statements, he probably wouldn’t have made it in politics beyond a city council or county commission somewhere. (RELATED: The Spectator P.M. Ep. 193: Gavin Newsom Runs Into Trouble With Intelligence Comments) It helps to come from big money and big connections. The Newsom family has been a big deal in California politics for so long that William Newsom Sr., Gavin’s grandfather, was instrumental in backing former governor Pat Brown all the way back when the latter was elected district attorney in San Francisco in 1943. The elder Brown paid Newsom grandpere back as he moved up the political line; as governor, he had the state develop Squaw Valley as a resort town in time for the 1960 Winter Olympics at Lake Tahoe, and then gave Newsom and his business partner John Pelosi (the father of Paul Pelosi, whose wife Nancy ended up as the Speaker of the House) a concession to run Squaw Valley at the low, low price of… one dollar. That partnership soured, but not so much as to prevent Jerry Brown, who became governor in 1974 after Ronald Reagan’s eight years succeeding his father, from giving William Newsom Jr., a lawyer whose main client was the family of J. Paul Getty, a judgeship. Newsom served his old clients quite well; as an appellate judge in the 1980s, he helped Getty’s son, Gordon, secure a change in state trust law that allowed him to claim his share of a multi-heir trust. As Dan Walters of CalMatters noted back in 2019, the coziness was handed down another generation as well… After Newsom retired from the bench in 1995, he became administrator of Gordon Getty’s own trust, telling one interviewer, “I make my living working for Gordon Getty.” The trust provided seed money for the PlumpJack chain of restaurants and wine shops that Newson’s son, Gavin, and Gordon Getty’s son, Billy, developed, the first being in a Squaw Valley hotel. Gavin Newsom had been informally adopted by the Gettys after his parents divorced, returning a similar favor that the Newsom family had done for a young Gordon Getty many years earlier. Newsom’s PlumpJack business (named for an opera that Gordon Getty wrote) led to a career in San Francisco politics, a stint as mayor, the lieutenant governorship and now to the governorship, succeeding his father’s old friend. George Carlin once said, “It’s a big club… and you ain’t in it.” Be a member of that club, and you can get away with all kinds of things. Neppo is busy testing the limits of that, though. A week ago, there was his dustup with Ted Cruz, which, at the time, seemed an almost unfathomable own-goal. Cruz, on his podcast, had called Newsom “historically illiterate,” which to anyone with any degree of common sense would be defined as “don’t know much about history.” But his response was, well… Ted Cruz calling a dyslexic person illiterate is a new low, even for him. https://t.co/XC75ybiGKd — Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) February 16, 2026 Nobody knew Gavin Newsom was dyslexic before this. They did know he was historically illiterate and not a particularly bright guy. And it isn’t that being dyslexic is evidence that he’s stupid. There are quite a few smart people who are also dyslexic. It’s just that Newsom isn’t particularly one of them. So when he was duly ratioed for that stupid X post, somebody at Team Neppo decided to lean into the dyslexia. Boy, did they. The thing is, traditionally speaking, you don’t want to advertise your limitations if you’re trying to get elected president. You want to present yourself as a superhero as much as you possibly can — physically fit, athletic, a full head of hair, smart as a whip, youthful (if possible), and even tall. There’s a tradition of the taller candidate usually winning presidential races going back to the founding of the country. The point being that normal political rules would say that if you’re dyslexic, you just wouldn’t talk about it. But with victimization serving as the chief political virtue and cultural sacrament of today’s Democrat Party, those rules are gone. Gavin Newsom is too white and too male (as beta as he may be) to curry favor with the voters, which is why he still lags behind Kamala Harris in current 2028 Democrat primary polling. Can you imagine the humiliation of trailing behind Kamala Harris? So he needs a victimization hook. And Neppo doesn’t have much. He’s as privileged a white boy as it’s possible to be, and that’s no good in a party of very prideful broken toys. So you get this… Gavin Newsom on his lifelong struggle with dyslexia: “I do think it’s a superpower” pic.twitter.com/7Q0J8d0xks — State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) February 22, 2026 And then you get what happened in Atlanta… Gov. Newsom to a black crowd in GA: “I am like you. I’m a 960 SAT guy. I can’t read.” pic.twitter.com/4Gk0WKbIYz — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) February 23, 2026 This is in front of a crowd of mostly black people. He just told them he’s just like them because he had a terrible SAT score, and he can’t read a speech. On account of his dyslexic superpower, you see. And we’re getting all this because he “wrote a book…” My mom didn’t want my dyslexia to hold me back. I wrote a book about the impact she, and others, had on my life. It’s called Young Man in a Hurry and it’s out on February 24th. pic.twitter.com/nwEGH86U7a — Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) February 23, 2026 He didn’t write the book, of course. He had minions to write the book. By his own account, he doesn’t read or write all that well. Of course, his real superpower is that he’s a Newsom, and the money and connections coming from that have ensured that if he fails, he fails upward. How many of the people in that audience can identify with those problems? Neppo is a very unusual cat, to be sure. Now that he’s decided to inflict himself upon the American electorate, he’s doing it his way — which is that he’s going to humiliate himself again and again while making utterly indefensible statements like the ones he offered in Munich, or this… Donald Trump is a jackass. pic.twitter.com/y0dNhSzYJT — Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) February 23, 2026 I don’t know what else to say after that, other than to offer a quote from the real wit among the Marx Brothers. Groucho never met Gavin Newsom, but if he had, I’m pretty sure he’d dust this one off… “He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.” READ MORE from Scott McKay: Five Quick Things: The Death of Good Faith Randy Is Just Fine, Say Dogs and Most Americans The 2028 Democrat Contenders’ Pilgrimage to Europe