Gingrich’s View: Media, Trump, and Trials | Newt Gingrich | EP 283

Full Episode Transcript:

Rebecca Weber: Hello, everyone. I’m Rebecca Weber. You’re watching Better for America, sponsored by AMAC. Now, joining me today is the former Speaker of the House and author of countless books, who continues to be one of the most prominent voices in the conservative movement today, Newt Gingrich. Welcome to Better for America.

I’m so happy to have you with me today.

Newt Gingrich: Rebecca, I’m delighted to be with you and to have this chance to talk with your listeners.

Rebecca Weber: Excellent. sir, Donald Trump is on trial and has been placed under a gag order and the left has really orchestrated the most corrupt campaign against any former president.

My question for you is why, in your view, is the establishment trying so hard to stop him? And maybe you can put that into some historical context for our viewers.

Newt Gingrich: I think Trump is the most aggressive and competent opponent that the Franklin Roosevelt Coalition has ever faced. They’ve run the country now since 1932.

they built huge bureaucracies, huge sets of rules. They’ve paid off millions of people with taxpayer money. and all of a sudden, they have an opponent who’s very serious about dismantling And replacing their corrupt system. so they, they’re terrified of him. And from their standpoint, breaking the law, rigging the game, whatever it takes, they’re going to do to try to beat him at every level.

And, The trial in New York is just one example. It’s totally dishonest. I actually think that the judge in the New York trial and the students illegally occupying the building in Columbia university are really the same people. They’re people who believe in breaking the law to impose their will on the United States.

and I think that you’re seeing a trial, which is probably the most dishonest, most corrupt trial of any political figure. In American history, and historically, the only parallel is Andrew Jackson in the 1830s, taking on the Bank of the United States and defeating it, when the entire power structure of the country was in favor of the bank and was making money out of the bank.

you have to go back something like, 190 years. To see the kind of ferocity that we’re seeing today. The other example, of course, would be Abraham Lincoln, where the Southern slave owners rebelled against electing somebody who was committed ultimately to abolishing slavery. But that was a unique sectarian fight.

this was between the North and the South. Jackson was faced with a nationwide fight with the establishment. And Trump is faced with a nationwide fight with an establishment.

Rebecca Weber: It’s not just the establishment. it’s, so many other facets of our society, including news, media. I think one of the greatest things that Donald Trump did was really call out, the, leftist news organizations as a fake news.

That is exactly what they are. But when did the media become as corrupt as it is today? Because it seems as if it was almost.

Newt Gingrich: No, it’s been building for a long time. In theory, white. In his book on the making of the president, 1968 has an entire chapter on how dishonest and biased the news media had become and how much they all fell in line, repeating the same stories and deliberately attacking conservatives. So that’s 1968. It just got steadily worse from there on.

and today it is, an incestuous, totally dishonest system in which if you were to try to stand for conservatism, you’d be driven out of the newsroom almost overnight. That’s happened at the New York Times and it’s happened at National Public Radio. We’ve seen, senior people who were forced out because they violated the hardline left wing anti American norm that now defines the culture of the newsroom.

And the newsroom is a key part of the establishment. It was the network of. The FBI, the CIA, the Democratic Party, the New York Times, the Washington Post, that came together in 2016 to try to destroy Trump, and they’ve been at it ever since.

Rebecca Weber: Yeah, they sure have. And this is another reason why AMAC We host a tremendous number of great articles, original content.

So I always encourage our viewers to go there and check out our new great stories. Now, sir, you led the house of representatives, to a historic victory in 1994, achieving the first Republican majority in 40 years. Now, in your view, what should Republicans be doing right now to win big in November, because we’ve got to win.

Newt Gingrich: I wrote a book called March to the Majority, which actually captures the lessons we learned. I started working on this project in December of 1978. So it took us 16 years. We lost in 80, 82, 84, 86, 88, 90, and 92. So it really was a long march to the majority. and I tried to outline in that book.

The, biggest lessons, I would say the key is to recognize as Reagan did and as Lincoln did that power ultimately comes from the American people. And that, Lincoln once said, with public sentiment anything is possible, without public sentiment nothing is possible. In his farewell address in 1989, President Reagan said, people said I won great legislative victories, but the truth is that it was you, the American people, who won the victories.

It was your phone calls, your messages, your communications to Congress. so these were your victories. And I think you have the same thing today. You, if I said any one thing to Republicans in Congress would be to be positive, to listen to what the American people want and to actively, aggressively fight for what they want so that the American people see you as being their champions and their leaders.

Arguing for things they believe in.

Rebecca Weber: Yes. an AMAC members are seeing that the last year has been such a tumultuous time for, house Republicans. And really a handful of members have already threatened to replace speaker Johnson. We had an interesting poll on our website at amac. us. People can check that out.

our members are saying maybe don’t go too hard after him. Now you’ve said that, that speaker Johnson is doing an excellent job. Can you explain to our listeners why he’s such an in such a tough position and why you believe he’s leading with courage?

Newt Gingrich: Yeah, I do much like your podcast.

I do podcast at Newt’s World where we explore things like this. I think one of the advantages I have is I actually was speaker of the house. So I spent four years trying to, organize and work with 435 elected house members and then a hundred senators and then a president, Bill Clinton in that period.

And because we were able to knit together. A positive majority, we’ve got welfare reform, we got reform of Medicare, Advantage came out of that period. We, reformed the telecommunications system, the Food and Drug Administration, and ultimately we got to a, four consecutive balanced federal budgets.

The only four balanced budgets in your lifetime. to do that, you have to build a coalition. We had 16 years building a team. Mike Johnson. In a much tougher situation, remember, when I won in 1994 and the American people won with the Contract with America, we had a 230 vote majority. In 1996, we had a 236 vote majority.

So we could afford to lose 6 or 8 people who were either crazy or bitter or whatever, and still have a majority. Kevin McCarthy, when he won, had a very narrow 4 vote majority. He had eight members, literally four percent of the House Republican Conference destroyed the speakership. Four percent, ninety six percent voted for McCarthy.

But the majority was so narrow that eight people could defeat the speaker. at that point, they spent three solid weeks. They’d only, remember, they’d only spent fifteen votes to get to McCarthy. They then spent, three solid weeks in chaos and different, very competent people showed up, any of whom could have been a good speaker, except they couldn’t get the votes.

Finally, in sheer exhaustion, they turned to Mike Johnson, who at that time was chairman of a subcommittee, vice chairman of the conference, had never been in senior leadership and his staff had never been in senior leadership. And in 15 minutes, one night he jumped from being a backbencher. To being Speaker of the House.

Nobody had ever done this. so I have enormous respect for the way he’s handled it. He has very, he’s been slow, careful, spends a lot of time listening to every single member, decides what is right and what is necessary. And then has the courage to do it. And I think, when he supported, aid to Ukraine, and he pointed out that his son is about to go to the U S Naval Academy and that he takes very seriously as a father and as a citizen doing the right thing for American security and that, and he said, this is not a game, this is history.

And I thought it took great courage, and I have great admiration, I think, in a very, hard situation, that Mike Johnson’s doing a good job.

Rebecca Weber: Yeah, Newt, I’ve been saying that you’ve played a major role, really, in shaping the Republican Party into the populist, force that it is no longer our grandfather’s, Country Club Republicanism.

so that’s really great, so many great wins and great wisdom that you have. can you, walk us through how that works? The Republican Party has become the party of hardworking American families, because that’s how I see it today in the year 2024.

Newt Gingrich: you put your finger on a very big thing.

There was a, there was basically, a line which ran from Barry Goldwater through Ronald Reagan to the contract with America and on to Donald Trump. And on the other side, there was the traditional. Republicanism of Jerry Ford, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Mitt Romney. And these were two very different worldviews.

the, establishment wing of the party wanted to actually be part of the establishment. the populist grassroots wing of the party wanted to change the establishment. So they’re really profoundly different attitudes. and, all of us stand on Reagan’s shoulders. he was an extraordinary leader.

And as we go through this, this student process, one of the things we’re doing at Newt’s World is we’re pulling together Reagan’s own quotes and his own words, about how he dealt with, the with student demonstrations at Berkeley and at Santa Barbara and elsewhere in California back in the late sixties.

And it’s a real education. When we did welfare reform, remember that Reagan, when he first campaigned for governor in 1965, came out for welfare reform with a work requirement. we finally passed it in 1996. So it took 31 years. And I always tell people that they. Contract with America stood on Reagan’s shoulders.

And I think in some ways Trump stands on Reagan’s shoulders and on the house Republican shoulders. I think that, when you understand, and this guy, as I said, goes all the way back to a chapter in Theodore White’s making of the president in 1968, when you come to understand how unrelentingly hostile the left wing news media is, how profoundly dishonest it is, how much it’s going to try to destroy the conservatives.

You get a different attitude. I took that into the, when I ran in 2012 and I took the news media on very aggressively, you can still see it on YouTube, and re and then, Trump picked up and improved on what I had done and developed the term fake news. and I have to tell you a funny story.

When my wife, Callista was the ambassador. To the Vatican. we went up to Turin in Northern Italy and, Turin has the largest, Egyptian collection outside of the British museum of any place except Egypt. And it was just an accident of a guy had come from Turin and collected all this stuff in the 19th century.

Wanted to sell it to the Louvre. They wouldn’t pay him what he wanted. So he went and he gave it to the city of Turin. So Clist and I went to this museum and we’re going through the museum. And this is about. We’re going through the museum and he points towards a statue and he says, some people will tell you X, but that’s fake news.

And I said, they’re thinking I’m listening to an Italian tour guide describing an Egyptian story using Donald Trump’s language.

Rebecca Weber: Yeah.

Newt Gingrich: And I thought, that’s when you’re getting cultural penetration.

Rebecca Weber: That’s exactly right. And, we’ve got two very different men. I don’t think you could find two people who are more different, than Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

And people have a clear, choice. it’s obvious. and, it’s very sad. I think that, that a lot of Americans still are asleep. They’re not really paying attention. So here at AMAC, we’re doing all we can to educate and share news and information, but we’ve got to look at the real facts and we’ve got to, we’ve got to understand, what could America look like in the next 10 years?

If Biden were to win versus Trump, could you paint that picture in your view? What might this country turn into?

Newt Gingrich: you can start with the universities and the riots and the degree to which we have allowed the growth of left wing professors and left wing students who are basically anti American. it was no accident at Harvard that they tore down the American flag and put up the Palestinian flag.

It’s no accident that at Columbia they’re saying things against America. It’s no accident that in Chicago you had an alderman who was leading a group chanting death to America. we’ve, the people like Joe Biden and Barack Obama have encouraged and allowed the rise of an anti American left, which is very dangerous to the very survival of the country.

second, you just look at your own eyes, look at the number of illegal immigrants pouring across the border. Look at the, amount of fentanyl killing young Americans. Last year, twice as many Americans died of drug overdose as died in the entire Vietnam War. and fentanyl clearly is a direct attack by the Chinese to destroy our country, through drug addiction and through, destroying the young.

is it, look, go to the grocery, if you have any doubt about Joe Biden, go to the grocery store and go fill up your gas tank and you’ll understand this guy’s a failure. He’s a failure at levels that affect human beings and his policies are failures and they’re a disaster. And as artificial intelligence, I’ve just did a podcast at Neutral on this as artificial intelligence becomes more important, the amount of computing power becomes more important, the amount of electricity you need becomes more important.

But the Biden administration has an anti electric production bias. So they’re going to they’re going to create an artificial crisis in which we are literally, they want us to buy electric cars and we’re in favor of artificial intelligence. But by the way. They both use electricity that we’re not producing, and this is a typical example of the Biden administration and, of course, in foreign policy, they’re a total disaster and, from the collapse in Afghanistan to the mishandling of Ukraine to the failure to support Israel against terrorism again and again, you see an administration that I think is very dangerous for America.

Rebecca Weber: Yes. Thank you for saying that, because it is the truth. if you, are, if you want somebody who’s anti American. pro death is really what Joe Biden and his regime is all about. you’ve demonstrated that we see how many people are dying coming across the border. And, he wants unrestricted abortion, really he’s anti family, it seems to me.

And we know that the family is a great incubator for freedom. So I do pray that more and more Americans will wake up and we just so appreciate your wisdom and your thoughts and perspective. I do want to mention, this great article, sir, that I was so honored. To publish in the last issue of the AMAC magazine.

You are our guest columnist, and there you wrote about how, despite the challenges that we are facing in politics, America is on the brink of remarkable scientific breakthroughs. Could you tell our viewers more about why you believe Americans should not lose hope?

Newt Gingrich: I’ll give you this three quick examples.

Artificial intelligence, space and biology. we are going to have, and I’ve done a series of podcasts about this at Newt’s World. We’re going to have a series of breakthroughs in our ability to use knowledge on a scale that will rival the entire 19th century revolution in electricity, the internal combustion engine, and chemistry.

And this is going to sweep through the system. It is going to dramatically reduce prices. It’s going to dramatically expand our capabilities. it’s going to have enormous impact at virtually every level. I’m working on a project now to rethink government in the age of artificial intelligence. And I think it’s going to save an enormous amount of money and be a major factor in moving towards, a, system of a balanced budget, a limited government, and returning power to the people.

Second, we’re on the edge of a revolution in space. Elon Musk is a single handedly, he is to space. What the Wright brothers were to flight and what Henry Ford was to automobile production. And he has already reduced the cost of putting a satellite in space by 90%. Biggest single deflationary factor in the current world.

And he’s now building what’s called a starship which will be 33 rockets, of the size of his Falcon rocket. the starship will lift 200 people or 150 tons of cargo. And be reusable, which is the great breakthrough that Elon Musk developed. And, it’s, they’ve had three runs now. It hasn’t quite worked yet.

It will presently work. And when it starts working regularly, it will open up space to people in ways we can’t imagine. There’s one asteroid, which by itself, it is estimated to have, 10 trillion, not billion, 10 trillion. And so I think you’re going to see just dramatic expansion of humans in space, starting with the moon in the next couple of years, then moving on to Mars and then beyond to the asteroids.

Third, we’re having breakthroughs in biology. there’s a terrific book by Mike Roizen, about a chain about real age. And he basically says that if you’re 20 years old today and you don’t die from a drug overdose, or from not using your seatbelt, the odds are that you will live to be 115 or 120 and that you’ll have the energy of a person 60 years old when you’re 115.

And he lays out, Roizen’s a great, student of longevity at the Cleveland Clinic, and he lays out all the different breakthroughs we’re getting in biology. That are going to enable us to live healthier, live longer, and ultimately be dramatically more productive. I’m, an optimist. I think that, Reagan used to say, You ain’t seen nothing yet, and I’m happy to adopt that as my slogan.

And that’s why I really wanted to, write that for AMAC. Because I thought it really was, it was a view of positive, a positive future that people need to have. Rather than all the daily negativity.

Rebecca Weber: It was terrific. We so appreciate it. Our members are really enjoying it. If you haven’t checked it out, be sure to open up that magazine and you can also find a digital version on AMAC dot us.

But you’re right, sir. We need to elect leaders who can help us unleash, American prosperity. There’s so much ingenuity developments. We don’t need leaders who are going to suppress and, oppress great minds, thinkers, Transcribed by https: otter. ai that, that is not good for the country.

what’s good for the country is individual freedom, and that’s what we’re standing up for here at AMAC. Sir, this was so nice to have you with me. I really do hope that I can have you back again with me soon.

Newt Gingrich: we enjoyed it very much. And as I said, I do a three free newsletters a week at, gingers 360, and we do three free podcasts a week, at new twirls.

So we, love being in touch and I love working with AMAC. I’ve, known the folks at AMAC for many years. I’ve watched it grow. I watched it become a very important force in America, and I’m just a thrilled Rebecca to be with you.

Rebecca Weber: thank you, sir. And thank you. You gave my father some hope some maybe 10, 10 years ago.

He’s gone now passed away, but, you encouraged him and said, do it, Dan. And I just will never forget how grateful he was for your encouragement. Then, we’re over 2 million members strong today and growing. So God bless you, sir. Thank you for all you’ve done for us and to everyone out there listening.

Thank you. Be sure to tell your friends and family all about AMAC. Make sure you join or renew. We need you. We need your membership. There is strength in members. Thank you all for tuning in today. I’m Rebecca Weber, and this is your podcast, Better for America. Have a wonderful day, everyone. God bless you.