Show Notes
Putting your foot in your mouth is not the best way to promote your new book.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom followed up flattering magazine profiles by seeming to pander to a black audience in Atlanta during promotional event.
“This week was a little different than a few weeks ago when he got the fawning treatment in Vogue and The New Yorker,” says On Background host Susan Crabtree. “it has an impact on us directly because I wrote a book with Jedd McFatter, one of the top researchers at the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), about Newsom’s personal history and California corruption. I may have gotten under his press team’s skin a little bit.”
Crabtree, a California-based reporter for RealClearPolitics and a GAI fellow, was doing a routine follow-up on Newsom’s Atlanta remarks by seeking details about his claim to have dyslexia. In the past, Newsom has sometimes claimed to have difficulty reading, but on a recent episode of his own podcast claimed to have read his guests’ new book “in an hour and a half.”
Newsom’s press team’s response to her question (shown below) made news of its own.
🚨🚨EXCLUSIVE and BREAKING: What about that @GavinNewsom dyslexia disgnosis – can the gov. provide any paperwork related to his dyslexia diagnosis at any time of his life?
Newsom’s comms team just now tells me to “fuck off.”
Think @GavinNewsom’s comms team is losing it today? pic.twitter.com/oT3GoK5Cxi
— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) February 23, 2026
“It’s almost like he needs, as a white man with privilege, to cite some type of disability so he can be part of this ‘victim pyramid’ that is so prevalent on the Democratic side of the aisle,” Crabtree says.
The dyslexia claim struck her because a few weeks earlier, “Newsom was lecturing other governors about his pardons and he said, ‘I read all the pardons myself.’ There are hundreds, if not thousands, of them. So, is this situational dyslexia?” she asks.
“I’m not trying to belittle a disability. I know plenty of people that struggle with dyslexia and it is very challenging, but if you’re going to make it a central part of your personal story, then let’s go back and look at it because he said very different things at very different times about how he learned about his dyslexia and his dyslexia diagnosis,” she adds. “At one point he said it was in 1972 when he was about five or six years old, and at other times he has said it was when he was 10.”
The profane response to her question by his press team is not even the only shot Newsom has taken at the Government Accountability Institute lately. GAI President Peter Schweizer’s latest book, The Invisible Coup, was released a month ago and spent its first three weeks as the #1 New York Times bestseller. “And Gavin Newsom actually wrote an email promoting his book and calling Peter’s book, ‘A far-right book about the replacement theory’ and begged his supporters to replace it atop the list with his own,” says co-host Eric Eggers.
“Well, it’s unclear if the press coverage about his book is going to do so.”
Newsom has long had difficulty with reporters who ask tough questions, as the video clips show. Crabtree explains that the small press corps that covers the state capital of Sacramento is not known for challenging him often. She has been an award-winning reporter in Washington and California for more than 30 years and had her share of run-ins with politicians unhappy with her tough questioning, mentioning the late Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) and disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY). Newsom slots in with them.
“He called me ‘delusional’ a couple weeks ago. Usually, if you want to have a conversation with a reporter that’s a real conversation and not just play-acting, you pick up the phone and you call them and say ‘Can we have an off-the-record conversation or an on-background conversation? I want to inform your reporting,’” Crabtree explains.
“And that’s fine. That’s how journalism is done. But this was on the record. ‘You’re delusional,’ he said. For asking questions. But I was being polite throughout,” she adds.
Crabtree’s book with Jedd McFatter, Fool’s Gold: The Radicals, Con Artists, and Traitors Who Killed the California Dream and Now Threaten Us All came out last year and documents the dark side of the Democratic Party’s California elites and the toll they’ve taken on the nation. The book exposes the corruption around the most powerful names in California politics: Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, and Adam Schiff, among others.
