Anderson Cooper scorches Trump's dyslexia mockery with supercut of president's own fumbles

Anderson Cooper pushed back hard Thursday against President Donald Trump's repeated mockery of California Gov. Gavin Newsom's dyslexia, sharing on air that he has the condition himself and methodically dismantled Trump's claim that it makes someone unfit for office.

"For the record, I'm one of them," Cooper told CNN viewers Thursday. "I had a mild form of dyslexia as a child. Reading did not come easy for me, and I still occasionally mix up Bs and Ds."

Trump spent the day using Newsom's publicly disclosed dyslexia as a weapon, calling it a "mental disability" and declaring flatly: "I don't want a person with mental disability to be my president."

Cooper wasn't having it. And he came armed with receipts.

He pointed out that Trump's own first-term chief economic adviser Gary Cohn has severe dyslexia, and that Trump's own transition team highlighted it approvingly in the news release announcing his appointment, calling it "an inspiring personal story."

"Apparently, President Trump didn't read that either," Cooper said dryly.

He also noted that Woodrow Wilson, who couldn't read at age 10, won the Nobel Peace Prize, adding that the dyslexia dig "has got to kind of hurt" for a president who had to "bogart one from an actual Nobel laureate."

Cooper then rolled a supercut of Trump himself stumbling over teleprompter words, mispronouncing "origins," "Yosemite," "Azerbaijan," and "acetaminophen" before landing his verdict.

"There are many ways the president could have chosen to go after a political opponent," Cooper said. "Doing it by stigmatizing millions of kids with learning disabilities - that seems to be just about the cruelest."