Why are Republicans lying about Gavin Newsom when the truth should be enough?

We learned a lot about Gov. Gavin Newsom from his recent visit to Georgia and the subsequent, and completely manufactured, meltdown that followed from Republicans across the country.

It all started when Newsom was at the Rialto theater in Atlanta Sunday for a one-on-one conversation with Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens to publicize his new book, “Young Man in a Hurry.” When Dickens asked what he hoped people would learn from reading the book, Newsom said he’d struggled with reading, tests and public speaking his entire life.

“I’m not trying to impress you,” Newsom said. “I’m just trying to impress upon you, I’m like you. I’m no better than you. You know, I’m a 960 SAT guy. … I haven’t overcome dyslexia. I’m living with it.”

That incredibly ham-handed effort to be relatable needs some serious workshopping. Luckily for him, the crowd was already on his side and ready to take the comment the way it was intended.

But that didn’t stop Trump-aligned operatives from twisting Newsom’s remark to the mostly white audience into supposedly telling a Black audience, “I can’t read, either,” which is what Republicans quickly, and dishonestly, morphed the moment into.

“Thinks a 960 SAT Makes Him ‘Like’ Black Americans,” Sean Hannity wrote on social media.

“You called Black people dumb,” Trump’s campaign posted. The suddenly racially sensitive Trump echo chamber went into overdrive.

Did Republicans assume Newsom was talking about Black Americans because Dickens, who graduated with an engineering degree from Georgia Tech, is Black? Or because Atlanta has a large Black population? Or did they more likely see a chance to cast Newsom in a bad light, knowing most people on the internet rarely take the time to find the truth for themselves?

Regardless of the motivations, the entire episode gave us some important political insights about Newsom and Republicans that we don’t typically have in our neck of the woods.

First and foremost, Republicans seem deeply worried about Newsom as a presidential candidate in 2028. Why else would they spend so much time lying about him now?

Also, they don’t seem to know what to do with him. Instead of heading into the open skies of California’s many governance issues under Newsom, GOP operatives manufactured an audience, put words in Newsom’s mouth and demanded written proof that he had really been diagnosed with dyslexia as a child.

Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. Until we see the X-rays to prove Donald Trump had bone spurs during the Vietnam War, don’t bother waiting for reading proficiency tests from Newsom or other candidates, either.

Finally, we learned that Newsom doesn’t care at all what Trump’s allies say about him; he just likes that they’re saying it.

If you haven’t been following him lately, Newsom has built a veritable cottage industry out of getting eyeballs on whatever he’s doing. Whether it’s podcasts with conservatives, his ALL CAPS Trump-inspired social media posts, or his “Make America Gavin Again” red baseball caps, what people say about him as he prepares his White House run is beside the point. It’s just that they’re saying something at all. If it tweaks the White House in the process, so much the better.

If the governor comes to Georgia again, may I humbly suggest Republicans try the truth about Newsom to attack him for a change? They could start with the California income tax rate. At 14.4% for the highest earners, that’s nearly 300% higher than Georgia’s income tax rate. In fact, California taxes are so high they’ve been a key factor for people relocating to Georgia, Texas, Tennessee and other low-tax or no-tax states.

Republicans could also discuss Newsom’s handling of the state’s ongoing homeless and opioid crisis. Or his run during the COVID crisis, when the governor ordered businesses to close, reopen and then close again — twice — as infection rates in the state fluctuated. There’s also the infamous photo of him enjoying a dinner party at the elegant French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley while he discouraged the rest of the state from gathering in groups for the holidays to prevent a COVID outbreak.

Newsom, in turn, could say he’s already admitted to plenty of these mistakes and is trying to learn from them, a quality too few people in American leadership today possess.