Newt discusses Kamala Harris and Mike Pence’s performances in the Vice Presidential Debate.
Transcript:
Newt Gingrich
Fox and Friends
Oct. 8, 2020
NEWT: Good morning. Well, let me just point out on the way in here, the polls right now are almost exactly where they were for Hillary Clinton because of the way we do polling. So, I would say that Biden ought to be exactly as comfortable as Hillary Clinton was because they have about the same lead. Which I think does not reflect reality in the country. But I thought Vice President Pence was amazingly well-prepared, very disciplined, and I think that he not only drew the contrast on policy, but in the process, he allowed people to really have a much better sense of who Senator Harris was as a person, and in all the stuff I have seen so far, she didn’t fair very well, just as she didn’t when she ran for president on her own. She dropped from 15% to 4% support while she was a candidate and dropped out even before Iowa because she had lost so much ground. So I think not only did Pence do his job, but I think it would be really helpful for the President to rewatch that debate two or three times and try to figure out what was it about the methodical, disciplined Pence approach that was effective If you watched him, he went right back at her and said you didn’t answer the question. That was very important because Biden had not answered the question. You now know what’s coming up in the next debate. It’s going to be Trump saying “Are you going to commit to not packing the court?”
That was a nice dig, but frankly the much more important point came a little bit later when Vice President Pence pointed out that the President was warned if he did not cut off the flow of people from China, we could have lost 2,200,000 people. That’s 2 million more than we actually lost. At that time, remember, Biden was opposed, attacked the president for doing it, said it was “xenophobic and wrong.” And I think that the administration, frankly, should do a much more aggressive job of drawing the distinction between Nancy Pelosi going to Chinatown, Bill de Blasio going to the movies, all these Democrats who said don’t overreact. While the President was following the advice that he was getting from Dr. Birx and from Dr. Fauci because they did believe if we didn’t cut off the flow of people from China we would lose over 2 million people. In that sense, President Trump helped save several million lives even in the middle of a tragedy. Of course she does. Look, she can’t tell the truth. I mean they learned from Walter Mondale who said, “I will raise your taxes” and the country crushed him. Reagan carried 49 states. I mean, if she came out and said “Yes, I’m really for the Green New Deal. I really want to end fracking and I really want to raise everybody’s taxes by $4 trillion.” There is no point in running the rest of the campaign. They have this problem that in order to appease their Left, they can’t tell the truth to the American people and that’s what you watched in these debates.
What I was impressed by was Vice President Pence was very calm, very direct. He kept coming back on message. I have looked at this stuff, I have read it, I watched it. It’s a very impressive performance in which he calmly keeps her pinned to reality and the constant reminder that you are allowed to have an opinion but you are not allowed to make up new facts is very important. Both Harris and Biden and for that matter Pelosi and Schumer and the whole gang rely on this. And, remember, you want to see who kills small business? Watch governor Cuomo who has killed thousands of small businesses, or watch Governor Murphy who’s killed thousands of small businesses. Every time you see a Democratic governor, you see a small business killer. I think it’s important that we understand which party represents small business, and which party represents giant government.
