Newt Gingrich on Fox and Friends Fox News Channel: May 17, 2020

In reference to the stay-at-home order restrictions that are intended to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, Newt on Fox and Friends said on Monday that watching American politicians “behave like dictators” is a tragedy.

Transcript:

Fox and Friends
05/17/2020

NEWT:

I fully expect from now until the election that President Obama will be an unendingly left-wing democratic campaigner. And I suspect he is also motivated a little bit by fear because these recent reports about the FBI and others in the oval office with him during the period of spying on President Trump and the transition. For the first time really implicate President Obama himself. So, I think there is a certain amount of — being a little anxiety ridden in what you are seeing Obama do.

NEWT:

Sure, I mean, look, the reality is that the Chinese took steps, lied to the entire plant as Peter Navarro said. They manipulated the world health organization to get it to be their partner in lying to the world. As a result, probably the estimate is that maybe as many as 90 or 95% of the people who are dying from this would not have been dying if the Chinese had invited the world in. In December of last year when they first began to realize they had a problem. So, if you take several hundred thousand dead people. Take trillions of dollars of economic disaster and realize it all came from China. At some point they have to be held accountable. They ought to be required to pay reparations for every country to which they exported the virus and they also ought to be held accountable for being so stunningly and consistently dishonest. But, remember, they are a totalitarian dictatorship. Xi Jinping has no relationship to a western leader. His primary power center the Chinese communist party. They operate out of fear. They run a police state. They have literally been disappearing people who said the wrong things about the virus. I think the number is now several hundred have been disappeared which is a Chinese term for literally taking them off the street. You don’t tell your family. You don’t tell the lawyers. You are just gone. So, we need to understand this is not a nice country. It is not a part of the modern world. It is trying to reestablish a world in which China becomes the center of everything.

NEWT:

Look, I’m talking to you from Italy which just decided on Saturday that they are going to let restaurants open today. St. Peters was open today. The Pope had a Mass for St. John Paul II’s 100th birthday. They have now reopened the Great Basilica of St. Peters. So, the Italians are moving back towards opening up across the board, they said in fact you will be able to come to Italy without having to go through quarantine after June 3rd. I think it’s tragic to watch an American politician behave like a dictator and we have seen this all across the country. People who chose, the governor of Minnesota protected Planned Parenthood but closed churches. Well, pretty hard to argue that Planned Parenthood is more important than a church or a synagogue. But you are seeing all these kind of political games by politicians. And I think they ought to back off some. And recognize Americans are adults. Americans can make rational decisions and, you know, ought to engage in social spacing. But if they do that what’s the beef?