Newt Gingrich on Fox & Friends | December 21, 2020

Newt gives his thoughts on the recent coronavirus relief bill, the dangers of China to America, and the importance of the Georgia runoff election.


Transcript:

Newt Gingrich
Fox & Friends
December 21, 2020

NEWT:

Well, two things. I think one, was Pelosi did not want to do anything which would help elect Donald Trump. She thought it was to her political advantage not to pass this before the presidential election. Second, the Democrats were desperate to get additional money for their government employee union allies and the big states. They couldn’t get it and in the end they gave up. I suspect they will try to come back under Biden. That’s why they are so desperate, for example, in Georgia. Because if the Republicans win those two seats, it’s very unlikely that tax money is going to go from Georgia to prop up New York or California or Illinois. On the other hand, if the Democrats win in Georgia. Then I think it’s very likely. And Mayor de Blasio indicated this when he said he wouldn’t introduce his city budget for New York until after the Georgia election because he wanted to wait and see whether or not he could get more money out of Washington. It was that straightforward. I think that’s part of what is going on. The other thing people need to recognize: even at $900 billion, they couldn’t say anything nice about each other? Because the gap is that wide. The disagreements are that deep, this is not going to go away. This was never a personality thing about Donald Trump. This is a fundamental division in America about what kind of country we are.

NEWT:

Look, I think she was frankly being pretty candid. She is counting on coming back in January or February or March with a President Biden applying pressure. The problem she has got is Kevin McCarthy’s strategy of recruiting broadly and running on a positive commitment to America has cut her margin in the House dramatically, and if the Republicans do keep the two seats in Georgia, they are not going to get anything like she wants through the Congress, let alone signed by a President Biden. But there is a deeper part of this. The Democrats are so in debt to the government employee unions that if they have to crush small business in order to take care of their government employee allies. That’s what they are going to do. That’s what you have seen in California. That’s what you see in New York. That’s what you see in Illinois. This is a clear pattern where the Democrats are desperate to get money for their government union allies and are willing to punish any business that gets in their way.

NEWT:

I think it matters some. The challenge that Manchin is going to find he is in a very left wing caucus, and that caucus wants to do things that frankly West Virginians don’t want. It will be interesting to watch and see how that plays out. The deeper point is once the presidential election was over, this was always going to get easy to get done. They could have done this six weeks ago. They could have saved an immense amount of pain for small businesses and for workers. But Pelosi and the Democrats were determined to not allow Donald Trump to have any victories and, you know, she talks about investing in science. We just had the most extraordinary achievements in vaccines in history. They were all done by President Trump. They were all laughing at him when he said it could be done. I think that in the long run, history will record that President Trump, in fact, aggressively used science combined with entrepreneurial businesses to get breakthroughs that people thought was impossible.

NEWT:

No, I think this is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. You have to start with the fact that the Chinese Communist Dictatorship is our most dangerous competitor, has a massive program underway to penetrate the United States from universities to spies to economic advantage. It’s an amazingly powerful effort on their part. And Swalwell is part of that. Frankly, having been be speaker, having chosen people to be on the Intelligence Committee, I wonder what Swalwell’s holding over Nancy Pelosi. Because, remember, she appoints him to this committee after the FBI has briefed her. It’s not like he was on the committee and she had to take him off. She never had to put him on. You have to ask yourself, why would the speaker of the house pick somebody who the FBI said had had a long relationship with a Chinese spy? I mean, this is just sort of crazy. I think as the country gets more and more aware of you how dangerous China is, things like this are going to become utterly unacceptable just as Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China are going to to become totally unacceptable. Just like Senator Feinstein had a driver who was a Chinese spy for years and she was head of the Intelligence Committee in the Senate. And the Democrats just seem to be oblivious to protecting the United States from the Chinese Communist Dictatorship and Swalwell is just one example out of many.

NEWT:

I think what it reflects is she went around thinking that she had somehow been elected as a legislative goddess and she attacked her fellow Democrats. She ran people in primaries. She was a constant noisy gadfly. That all looks terrific on television, looks terrific in social media. But legislative bodies are very, very tough. Inside a legislative body they have ways of getting even. I think frankly, it was partly that she is too radical. But mostly she is just too nasty. And I think this was a personal repudiation of her. I will be curious to see how she deals with it. 46-13 is not a good sign for her future career. And I suspect has weakened her dramatically. I think she wanted to run against Schumer in the Democratic primary for the Senate in 2022. I think this repudiation will make it very hard for her to put together a Senate primary against the minority leader in the Senate.

NEWT:

I think the difference is, first of all, turnout. And, second, the degree to which the message about Raphael Warnock’s extraordinary radicalism reaches the average Georgian. The polls I have seen that I trust, which have been more accurate frankly than silver, would indicate that we are ahead by two or three points in both races. Ossoff is very radical, Warnock is the most radical candidate nominated by a major party in my lifetime. But also I get a sense talking to people who are on the ground that the turnout is actually better for us than it was in November. We just have to keep pushing and my message to conservatives is simple: email, call, tweet, whatever, every person you know in Georgia and make sure they vote. If every conservative votes, we will win these two seats and as we were just talking about, this is decisive. This is the most important runoff in American history. It will decide who runs the senate. And the difference between Schumer and Pelosi trying to pay off the government unions everywhere in the country and having a Mitch McConnell in the senate and a Kevin McCarthy in the House, the difference in the country will be dramatic depending on the outcome of the Georgia runoff.

NEWT:

If we were serious, which we are not. A bill of this size with this much money would have to take a week or more. Members are going to vote blindly. They will have no idea what they’re voting for. If you’re leadership, that’s terrific you get to put in whatever you want to. If you are an average member you just got run over by the system. You will have no knowledge of what’s in this bill. And for some lobbyists, it is the great payday. They will slip some paragraph in there that will justify them getting paid by their clients for the next 20 years. It’s a terrible, terrible way to legislate. And it’s something which I deeply disprove of. Again, the fewer people in the room, the more powerful the leaders are, the more they can do. But it’s a really bad way to run a legislative body.