Ed Neuhaus 
Oval Office. March 17th, 2026.
“Honestly, I’m all for people with learning disabilities, but not for my president. I don’t want, I think a president should not have learning disabilities, okay? I know it’s highly controversial to say such a horrible thing. The president of the United States Gavin Newscum admitted that he has learning disabilities, dyslexia. Everything about him is dumb.”
He said “I know it’s highly controversial to say such a horrible thing” and then just kept going. He knew. He said it anyway. From the Oval Office. With cameras rolling.
And it wasn’t a one time thing. He said it four times that week. Oval Office. Truth Social. Fox News Radio. A rally. Four times. This is what he believes.
I am deeply dyslexic. And that pissed me off.
I’ve been hearing some version of this my whole life.
Seventh grade. English class. My teacher’s entire identity was sentence diagramming. Not a unit. Not a chapter. The whole year. She built this thing called Diagram Sentence University, (or some stupid name). It was a game. A competition. You climbed the ranks, leveled up, became a champion. She turned diagramming sentences into a goddamn varsity sport.
I tried. I really did. But it was clear from the start that this was not going to work. I’m dyslexic. In 7th grade I was lucky if I could read all the words. Now you want me to take them apart and sort them into little boxes on a diagram? While the rest of the class is racing up the leaderboard?
She didn’t see a kid who was struggling. She saw a kid who wasn’t trying. A kid who didn’t care about her thing. And that made her mad. Lets be honest, I did not care about her precious little game. Every time I turned in an assignment I failed it. She was not teaching me how to do it better, she was just expecting it to magically happen.
And I was bringing down the averages. She had her nice shiny leaderboard up on the wall and there I was, parked at the very bottom. I think it embarrassed her. The funny thing is my friends got it. Thirteen year old kids could see what was happening. But the adult in the room whose job it was to teach? She couldn’t. She was used to easy students. Kids who just got it. I was someone she actually had to teach, and it turns out she wasn’t very good at that part.
So she told me I would never make anything of myself. Because I couldn’t diagram sentences. And then she tried to get me thrown out of the gifted and talented program.
I was thirteen years old. And a teacher, an adult who was supposed to be helping me, looked me in the face and told me I was going to be nothing.
It wasn’t because I couldn’t do her thing. It was because she didn’t know how to help me. And the easiest thing she knew how to do was get rid of me so she wouldn’t have to try.
That teacher was wrong about me. The President is wrong about us.
And they’re wrong for the same reason. My teacher didn’t know how to help a dyslexic kid, so she tried to get rid of me. The President doesn’t understand what a learning disability is, so he calls it disqualifying. Same thing. You don’t understand the person in front of you, so instead of trying harder, you just throw them away.
That’s not how leaders are supposed to work. I run a real estate brokerage. I serve on the board of the Lake Travis SEPAC, our local Special Education Parent Advisory Council, because I want to be in the room fighting for kids who need someone who gets it. I have done fine. Better than fine. That teacher was wrong about me thirty years ago, and the President is wrong about people like me right now.
But here’s what bothers me more than the statement itself. It’s how easy it’s become to just let things like this slide. A leader says something we know is wrong. Something we can feel is wrong. And we just… move on. We shrug. We say, well, I don’t agree with that part, but… and then we keep going like it didn’t happen.
And that’s the problem. Because when we do that, we’re telling that leader they can say whatever they want and nobody is going to call them on it. The thing they said today that was wrong? Tomorrow it’s something else. And it keeps going. Because we taught them there’s no cost.
I’m not here to tell anyone how to think about every issue. I’m really not. But we have to be able to look at the leaders in our lives, all of them, and hold them accountable when they’re wrong. Your boss. Your pastor. Your elected officials. Everyone. That’s not partisan. That’s just being a grown up.
This one is personal for me. I can’t speak to every fight. But I can speak to this one. The President of the United States said that people who learn like I do are unfit to lead. I know that’s wrong. You know that’s wrong. And I’m not going to just move on from it so that the next thing is easier to ignore too.
I won’t. Not on this one.
