“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”
That was the quote that will effectively function as the political epitaph for George W. Bush. Before, during, and after his presidency, we were assured we were being led by the dumbest man on earth — one who only got into Yale because of the fact that he was a legacy and a good baseball player.
He only became president, the media told us, because he was the kind of guy we’d “like to have a beer with.” Never mind the fact that Bush had given up drinking; this was meant to assure us that he was as dumb as us plebes and that we should have voted for someone smarter.
Forget about the fact that this is moot due to the Democrats’ imprimatur upon the two candidacies of Joseph Robinette Biden, a man so obviously senile that only the willfully blind or themselves senile couldn’t figure it out. The party of the pseudo-intellectual laptop warrior is now firmly behind a non-senile president for 2028 that is not only quantitatively dumber than George W. Bush (who wasn’t that dumb, really, but don’t tell that to Aunt Purple-Hair), and not only got into the prestigious institution of his choice apparently because of his skill at baseball, but brags about it.
In case you missed it, California Gov. Gavin Newsom soft-launched his obvious 2028 presidential campaign this week, telling CBS News “I’d be lying otherwise” if he said he wasn’t considering it.
“I’d just be lying. And I’m not — I can’t do that,” he told Robert Costa.
He then proceeded to continue the soft-launch by, um, lying. Here’s Newsom, raised into a wealthy family, talking to former NBA players on a podcast about being effectively fatherless and how he was “hustlin’” because, “It was about payin’ the bills, man … Wonder bread and Mac ‘n cheese. That’s how I grew up, bro.”
Gavin debuts his hip hop persona on an NBA podcast:
“It was about payin’ the bills, man.”
“Hustlin.”
“I raised myself.”
“Wonder bread and Mac ‘n cheese. That’s how I grew up, bro.”
(His dad was the attorney for the billionaire Getty family.)pic.twitter.com/24CXtlF4fS
— John LeFevre (@JohnLeFevre) October 26, 2025
Who would be a worse president – Gavin Newsom or AOC?
No, it was not, bro: Here’s Newsom pictured in a 1991 San Francisco Chronicle feature titled (I really wish I could make this stuff up) “Children of the Rich.”
A disturbing photo of Gavin Newsom resurfaces of his troubled youth, growing up in the slums with thugs and suffering through his life in poverty.
Truly heartbreaking. pic.twitter.com/gaRbvSpLqG
— Sara Rose 🇺🇸🌹 (@saras76) October 26, 2025
How dumb do you have to be to get away with this? That question isn’t rhetorical. Remember that whole thing about George W. Bush not being qualified for Yale? The Washington Post noted in a 2004 article that while George W. Bush had an above average SAT score, it wasn’t that much above average — especially for Yale, where it was decidedly below the usual cut-off mark:
The two major-party presidential candidates in 2000 had above-average SAT scores: 1206 for George W. Bush and 1355 for Al Gore. Many public officials decline to reveal their scores.
I’m not a major-party presidential candidate, but I will say that I beat both of them and leave it at that. I’ll also note that 1) the average SAT score is kinda low and 2) Gavin Newsom definitely did not hit it.
We know this because 3) he’s bragging about it. From a January 2024 Politico piece:
Gavin Newsom on his podcast said he got a 960 on the SAT which is below average. Typically (not always) in presidential races, whoever has the lower IQ wins, so he’d have a strong chance. You gotta be good at playing dumb or being dumb and he’s good at both. pic.twitter.com/sOZGSMzlEv
— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) March 7, 2025
According to PrepScholar, the average weighted SAT score on the scale of 1600 (it was 2400 for a brief period between 2006 and 2016, when critical reading and writing were separated into two 800-point categories of their own instead of one 800-point category) comes down somewhere a bit above 1000 between 1972 and 2024, rather consistently. In the year Newsom took it, it was 1009. That means he’s below average.
Yet, he got into Santa Clara College — a well-regarded private Jesuit school where the College Board says the average SAT range for accepted students is between 1360 and 1480. (Yale’s, by way of comparison, is between 1480 and 1560 — and although these are current numbers, Dubya was much closer the minimum end of the range than Gavin was.)
But wait — he was “hustlin’” and learning to play ball, right? Well, as RealClearPolitics Susan Crabtree pointed out in a thread on X, not so much.
For instance, as she pointed out in a Monday X thread, one of his baseball “contemporaries” at Santa Clara — John Savage, current head UCLA baseball coach — couldn’t remember this diamond phenom ever being one of his teammates. Nor does Santa Clara, where he doesn’t appear on the school’s all-time baseball roster.
Newsom’s “Field of Schemes” Stolen Athletic Valor:
If baseball got him into college because his grades and SATs sucked, why is he not on the official Santa Rosa all-time baseball roster, below?
Why can’t John Savage, the current UCLA baseball coach whose time at Santa Clara… pic.twitter.com/ShZBNlz9OB
— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) October 27, 2025
So, what happened? As per Crabtree: “He fails to mention, while playing up his baseball admission, however, that he had a personal letter of recommendation from none other than former California Gov. Jerry Brown, who had finished serving his first tenure as governor two years prior, accompanied his 1985 application to the school.
“Those famous political and moneyed San Francisco connections also played a key role in getting Newsom on the university’s JV baseball team, where he played for one season before getting hurt and dropping off the team and heading out for a semester in Europe to clear his head.”
“Newsom’s assistant baseball coach at Santa Clara University who now is the head baseball coach at Cal State University, East Bay, told Susan Crabtree, that Newsom was a left-handed pitcher and first baseman on the JV team as a freshman,” she wrote.
“Then he got hurt, I can’t remember what the exact injury was, and then he just decided not to play anymore,” the coach said, adding that he remembered him being connected “to some alums.”
-When Crabtree contacted Santa Clara University, where Newsom graduated from, there were no records or photos of him playing on any of the school’s baseball teams.
-That’s because he only played on the JV team as a freshman and then dropped off the team, and the university’s…
— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) October 27, 2025
The fatherless 960 SAT guy hustlin’ his way into an injury and a semester in Europe to clear his head, just like all of us regular American working-class folk do.
Look, I’m not saying that SAT results are predictive of future success in most endeavors — although I will admit, if I correctly remember the exigency of the test when I took it many moons ago, I’d probably feel a bit more safe at night if the leader of the free world had managed to clear quadruple-digits in the thing. But the point is that, after a campaign soft-launch where he told CBS News that he had to be honest with them, we have plenty of evidence that this guy’s ludicrous backstory is clearly bogus.
This is not a guy whose origin story comes from being a slightly dim high schooler who started hustlin’ with some Wonder Bread, Kraft Easy Mac, and a bit of backyard hoops and pitching practice, and who then overcame those obstacles to get a position at a reasonably prestigious private school with a 960 SAT, and who then managed to stay on at the school even though he couldn’t play ball anymore. These are not a list of things that happen to anybody, much less a guy featured in a San Francisco newspaper’s “Children of the Rich” column.
What’s the lie here? Perhaps all of it. Perhaps the 960 was shooting for what score he thought average voters might identify with and missed the mark by a few hundred points. Perhaps it’s omitting the Jerry Brown recommendation letter. Perhaps it’s the absentee father. Pick your poisoned fruit.
However, consider that “The Decider’s” SAT score — ridiculed by the press at the time — was a full 25 percent higher than the guy the liberal elite currently thinks is brilliant. Standardized testing can’t suss out all abilities (or lack thereof), but come on: Either he’s stupid, or thinks we are. As a provably smarter man than Gov. Newsom once put it: “You can’t get fooled again.”
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