Chainsaw History - Part Two: Newt Gingrich, Family Man

Episode Date: April 18, 2026

{ Discover more at ChainsawHistory.com — access our full episode list, delve into bonus content, and click the logo in the center of the page to support our show with a paid subscription! }Jamie Chambers drags Bambi back into the life of Newt Gingrich, now a college professor with a wife and two children as he plots to take over the 6th Congressional District of Georgia, takes a huge advance for a book he would never write, and downplays his love of Richard Nixon. Newt chides his opponent for plans to work away from her family if elected while he constantly cheats on his wife during her cancer treatments and divorces her immediately after winning—before giving a middle finger to the friends and supporters who helped get him to Washington.In this episode we encourage listeners to support their local food pantries. Find a location near you using this website: https://foodfinder.us

I have it nasal surgery. It changes the whole acoustics in there. It fixed it. I remember having to adjust afterwards because it wasn't quite the same, but I liked it better. Baby, here we are back where we started this whole thing. Back at my... Five years ago. Yeah, it's been a... God, has it been that long? In 2021, yeah.

It's been a really long five years. It's been crazy, but not that many episodes because of all this stuff that's happened in between each one. And if we sound different, it is because we are back where we started. Raven Sound Studios is currently under construction. Apparently, Kevin tells us we're going to have an even cooler recording space once it's all done. But until then, we are back doing old school with my crappy home microphone and laptop. And we're currently sitting in in your bedroom. Yep.

With the podcast dog sitting nearby. Yeah. And if you hear faint whimpering in the background, it's the other two. The other two dogs who are sad, they can't be in here. But trust me, that's a bad idea. Yeah. We would not be able to record. So do you remember all that time ago when we talked about a dude with a really huge head named Newt Gingrich? Yes, ish. Yeah. My former college professor, former Speaker of the House of Representatives. We talked about him on this very show, approximately.

from nearly like 78 years ago. Yeah. So it's okay if you don't remember a whole lot from part one. Unlike our previous subjects, Newt is still very much alive and still very much running his mouth. He doesn't know how to stop. Yeah, we see him on Foxx, he's a really good buddy with Sean Hannity.

Oh, yeah. Has been ever since the days when Sean Hannity was a local talk radio host. Gross. To give listeners context, as of this recording, the United States is tangled up in a war with Iran with important shipping lane known as the Strait of Hormuz, currently shut down. And a lot of very big brains in the internet have decided to weigh in on this

how to get us out of this particular pickle. Well, we shouldn't have gotten into this particular pickle. It was dumb. That's, why are we talking about that? We have a problem to solve here. There's been a lot of hilarious memes about all the ways you could go by land around the straight, that are all very dumb and I don't understand how any of this works. But however, none of the ideas presented on the internet have been as jaw-droppingly dumb as the one presented by Professor Gingrich. So over on X.com, the everything app, on a tweet dated March 15, 2006, Newt cited a substack newsletter called China Talk as his source for this incredible idea. Quote, instead of fighting over a 21-mile bottleneck forever, we cut a new channel through friendly territory. A dozen thermonuclear detonations, and you've got a waterway wider than the Panama Canal, deeper than the Suez, and safe from Iranian attacks, unquote.

Yeah, that seems dumb. That seems ultra dumb, Jamie. He has decided we can solve this shipping crisis by dropping a dozen nukes in the Middle East, on our allied countries, no less. Yeah, they would just fucking love that. Now, we could spend way too much time dissecting all the ways this is insanely stupid, but... This should be self-evident to everyone listening that this is a bad and dumb idea. Now, the China Talk article Newt references is titled, It's Time, an open letter to Secretary Hegseth. And it springs off a real proposal from decades ago called Project Plowshare, which was a real sort of like exploratory concept of using nukes to create a sea level canal through Columbia.

We didn't do this because every subject matter expert made it clear. It was a really fucking stupid idea. Yeah, because that seems dumb as fuck. Are you kidding? And so, if you get all the way down to the bottom of this article, the final paragraph of it reads thusly. Quote, Your boss is a builder.

Trump doesn't want to play nice with a coalition of countries he hates to patrol the strait of Hormuz. He wants to cut a ribbon and watch the Chiron on Fox. Trump Canal opens. Largest in human history. Mr. Secretary, give him that Chiron, and you win the war, and you keep your job. We can even tariff the tankers, unquote. That's the... Now, hold on, hold on, hold on, before you explode.

Just in case you didn't catch the absurdist tone of the article, it also includes a disclaimer at the very, very end. Quote, the views expressed above do not necessarily represent those of anyone with brain cell. Unquote. So, yes, it's true. My one-time college history professor, former Speaker of the House, once second in line to become President of the United States and could hypothetically have had control of the nuclear codes,

made a serious proposal about nuking the Middle East based on a satire article written by an internet troll. Oh my God. That's the most boomer shit. This is the fucking, uh, and he wrote it to Pete's Hegseth. The also, we have the dumbest people alive in charge of the most powerful nation on Earth. It's fucking terrible. But thank God, at least Newt's hands are far away from power at this point. He's just hosting stuff on Twitter.

That's okay. I don't think Pete Huggseth is keeping his job anyway. Yeah, we shall see. He's already being set up to be under a bus. Yeah, we can't veer off topic and get away. That would be a long talk about Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, but instead we're focusing on the idiot who decided we should nuke the Middle East to create a new canal.

My former teacher, Newt, who we've left alone for months. We've had a lot going on, but he's left us no choice now, but to hurt him a little bit more. So we've come out of our semi-retirement to show everybody what a weird little freak he's always been. So for that, for listeners, that means we're back to the saga, Professor Newt, part two. The Gingrich strikes back. Yeah. Oh, boy. Are we going to learn about how just Newt, fun?

Fucking is terrible and how he destroyed democracy. Indeed. Cool. So welcome to chainsaw history, everybody. That was a long intro going in. This is the podcast in which we look at American history with the same reverence and respect. Afro-Man showed the Ohio sheriff's deputies who raided his house. Fuck the police.

Indeed. I'm your host, Jamie Chambers, and this is my sister, Bambi. Hello. We are a comedy podcast, everybody. I'm not a historian, but I've watched a bunch of Ken Burns documentaries over the years. So that'll have to do. Yeah, I'm here for the ride, y'all. If you go to chainsawhistory.com, you can look at ways to support the show, find some of our extra content like our value of series where Bambi reads me 80s children's biographies.

And no time for love, Dr. Jones, where we explore the fictional life of Indiana Jones. And just so everybody knows, here's a little warning up top. There is zero way to avoid the discussion of politics in this episode. So if you want your history. If you want your history free of modern American political drama and bullshit, I don't blame you, but the story of Newt Gingrich is just not for you because he, like Baby says, he kind of is one of the reasons we are where we are. And that's why he's worth talking about, not just because I knew him briefly.

Yeah. I mean, on top of being just ultra shitty, he's very, very relevant, especially to this one moment in time. Even if he's also powerless of impotent at this point, pathetic, which is funny. And we'll talk about that in part three. But as usual, we have a ton of sources. The two most important ones for this episode are Burning Down the House, Newt Gingrich, The Fall of a Speaker and Rise of the New Republican Party by Julian E. Zelizer. And the other main source is a PBS frontline documentary all the way back from 1996 called

The Long March of Newt Gingrich, which you can still find freely available on pbs.b.org. Plus, I will cite a bunch of newspaper articles and other stuff as we go. a lot. So in a very brief recap of last episode, last time we covered how Newt's biological father was an aggressive drunk. And his stepfather that he grew up with was a terrifying

military disciplinarian. And the little guy lived in a room filled with snakes and dreamed of owning his own zoo one day. If only he could have just had a zoo. That's in that alternate timeline where Hitler became a happy painter. Dude got to run a zoo.

Well, as a teenager, as a teenager, he visited a World War I battlefield, Verdun, and dreamed of political power thinking I should be the one to send men to die. Yeah, that's... Here in Georgia, Newt started fooling around with his high school geometry teacher, who he married and fathered two children with after his first year in college. You know, she gets what she gets. Fortunately, this does not go well for, as you will see in this episode.

Then, the family moved to New Orleans for... to attend grad school for his career plan to be a college history professor. And while on campus, he helped organize a protest movement on behalf of nudity. Oh, and his college dissertation kind of made light of Belgian atrocities during their colonization of the Congo. And that's where we kind of ended was this shitty dissertation. But he finally became a college professor after basically saying, isn't it great that white people civilized all the black people of the Congo?

Good God, he's terrible. Yep. But if only he would have stayed. A college professor. Well. And just been shitty. As you'll see, he does not say a college professor for his home. No, he doesn't.

Because that was never really his long-term plan, even at this stage in his life. So this is where we pick back up with Reverend Dr. Newton, Leroy, McPherson, Gingrich. And except for the Reverend part, all of those things are his actual name. Finally, out of college and ready to make a name for himself in the wide world. And boy, howdy does he? You ready for this? Oh, God. Let's do it.

All right. So, let's get back. We're in the early 1970s. Newt was a fan of the Vietnam War. And in military action, General, of course, stopping communism, of course, as a conservative warrior, is a huge priority. But he'd use his own marriage and student status

to obtain deferments, which was way less humiliating than being outright rejected for being half blind with flat feet. Because he would have never had to serve. He was a physically, not great. But with his education complete, Newt was ready to build his career

that was a lot less about teaching and a lot more about politics. This is why he chose his first teaching position as a college history professor based on how he felt about Georgia's sixth congressional district more than the details of the college or the job. So he landed at West Georgia College

in September 1970. Again, because this was a vulnerable district that he felt he might be able to win. What? Con? Yeah. His friend and biographer Mel Steeley had this to say. Ever since I've known you, he has felt that he would have an impact on history, that he was a historical person.

When he was a teacher here at West Georgia, he viewed himself as a historical person in his young years. Talk about the young church hill. You know, you study that to try to get an idea who this guy is later on and so forth. Well, I mean, yeah, he's historical. But so was Hitler. Right, but when you literally are in your 20s, you're still young and you're starting your career and you're like, I am going to, I am going to make history. That is narcissistic.

Yeah, it's complete narcissism. It's awful. And then you see how he treats other people over time. He's kind of the malignant narcissist, the toxic kind. He's, like, spoiler alert everybody. Noot's not a good person. So, yeah, definitely a healthy way of looking yourself very at the beginning of your career. But it does call back to his.

ambitions when his stepdad took him to the European battlefields of World War I. He's like, ooh, I want to be the guy sitting back in Washington sending these guys to die in these killing fields. That's not normal, Jamie. That's not usually people feel some kind of some people,

most people I would think would at least feel a sense of awe. Not, I need to be the guy. You can listen to so many accounts of people who visit the battlefields of like for Don. the song and like what, like just be in that space where so many died and there's all these visuals of it. It should be solemn.

It should be a little sad. Newt was just like, no, this could be me, not out here. God no. I want to be back there. I want to be back there signing pieces of paper that make this shit happen. But anyway, despite his long-term goals, Newt's job was teaching history to college students, which of course is how I know him best. A friend and former student named Lee Howell gave his own.

grade to Newt as a teacher. He's a very good teacher. Very stimulating. That's what you want a teacher to be, is make you think. And he did make you think. If you take his lectures, or nowadays, if you take his political speeches, and put him down in black and white, you realize they're pretty shallow, and you realize you can shoot holes through him.

And he's not the most logical person. But when he's speaking, he's impressive. God. That's his friend, or at least former friend at this point. But yeah, it's like, it's like, and I will tell you, this, I 100% have this exact same thing with New, because when he's talking, he really does have this certain charisma. And he has just enough of, of this backing because he's sight, he does cite things because he reads stuff. He has it. But at the same time, he strings together all this stuff.

And it's like, once you think about it hard, it falls apart. It's the kind of thing that impresses young men, like, I was. at the time. But then once you actually develop critical thinking skills and you're not just bowled over by his enlarged ego in his presence, it's like, oh yeah, this guy's kind of full of shit. Yeah, well, you know, I can name a particular vice president that we have currently, that he makes the dumbest shit sound somewhat intelligible. Yeah, but the sad thing is Newt had more dignity and respect than our current vice president. Well, I mean, he has no Riz.

He doesn't have the juice. And Newt had enough Riz to marry his high school math teacher. Which, gross. I mean, for whatever you got to say about that. It was during this period where Newt got a nickname used behind his back at college, Mr. Truth, because Professor Gingrich bulldozed everyone else with his version of the truth might be. And he couldn't understand why his brilliance didn't fast track his academic career,

even though he'd never bothered to publish his dissertation and did not want to build up his credentials over time. It's like, he's like, don't you know who I am? Nobody, motherfucker. You're a junior professor at a college. So after one year on the job, he applied to be president of the college. Oh, my God. It was stunned when the administration instantly rejected him. Then the next year, he applied to be the chair of the history.

Department and was once again shocked when the dean didn't pick him for the job. Like two years in, he wants to be president and or chair of the history department. No, that's not how hierarchy works. Yeah, it's definitely not how academic Nicodemia and that career track, which is a slow thing, which again, too, if you want to do something, you actually have to publish and, you know, do stuff besides just giving lectures. So after a few years of teaching and not becoming emperor of West Georgia College, the professor decided his moment had arrived.

The sixth congressional district was reapportioned in 1971 to be a little less gerrymandered, and so it changed from a purely rural district to one that included some suburban and even a little bit of the urban areas in Fulton County. Newt sensed it was time to break the Democratic Party's hold. From the book Burning Down the House, quote,

voters in the reorganized sixth district were unified by an overall hostility to high taxation by a business-friendly posture and by an eagerness to reject the stereotypes of old-line southern racism, even while racial inequality remained deeply embedded in the residential and educational character of its neighborhoods, unquote. Newt's target was a stereotypical Dixiecrat, an old World War II veteran named John Flint, who stood firmly against LBJ's civil rights legislation. So this is back the George Wallace-era racist Democrats from in the South.

Yep. that all eventually flipped and became Republicans. But this is still in the transitional period, because we're in 1971. As we would continue to do throughout his political career, Newt positioned himself as an outsider, taking on the establishment, trying to make a tent that could include anyone sick of the status quo and ready for new leadership and ideas. In one press conference, Newt said the following,

quote, The second thing I think I do as a congressman, I think is, I think is demand a real sense of ethical fairness. in Congress. I mean, the place is sufficiently corrupt right now that there's no reason for anyone back home to have any trust in their congressman, unquote. No shit, Newt. Oh, God. Okay. Yeah. How do you, I mean, do you feel great about Congress right now? No, but... He certainly didn't help. The professor drew inspiration from two jarringly different American political figures, again from Burning Mill in the House. Quote, Richard Nixon wasn't

wedded to any particular issues as much as he was concerned with winning elections. Like Newt's other hero, Teddy Roosevelt, Nixon struck him as a role model for his own generation of Republicans, a shrewd, pragmatic strategist who was attempting to build a durable governing Republican majority with sizable blue-collar support, unquote. So yes, Richard Nixon and Teddy Roosevelt are two, Newt's two guiding stars of presidents at this point. And Nixon is president at this moment. Uh, you should have leaned more towards Teddy Roosevelt and less towards Nixon. So as we're getting to this point, uh, where Newt's running for the first time for real, it's

1974. I said 71 earlier. And that was when, right after he, that was the year he was doing all that shit in West Georgia College. Uh, so this is 1974 and the Watergate scandal was dominating the news. And Newt didn't exactly advertise his love and admiration for tricky dick. Oh, you don't say. In fact, he capitalized on it and tried to tie his opponent to the broken corruption in Washington, even though he was in the opposite party. So, standing against the openly racist Dixiecrat, Newt scored the endorsement of the Atlanta Daily World,

the oldest black newspaper in Georgia. Oh. Endorse Newt. And stated, he is, quote, a progressive in his views, and he is also fair-minded on racial issues, unquote. Flint slammed Newt with negative ads that left him so butt hurt that he filed a complaint. Ha ha. Quote,

And this is a direct violation of the Fair Campaign Practices Committee Code of Ethics. And I am filing a protest with them, asking them to come in and investigate his commercial and ask him to take the commercial off the air and to apologize for it, unquote. What a bitch. No, you just want to give him a wedgy, you fucking dork. What a fucking bitch. And as far as I'm aware, nothing came of this. complaint, you little bitch. The campaign didn't have much of a budget. So there were a lot of like DIY signs and volunteers donating their own materials. Once Ray has Newt's team creating

campaign materials by lantern light in an empty warehouse with no other power on. So 1974 was a hell of a year to run as a Republican. Yeah, I'm sure it was. So it's likely Nixon stalled the beginning of Newt's political career. He lost, even if he made a decent showing against a longtime incumbent. Most younger, more progressive candidates ran as Democrats, which helped Newt stand out and make an early name for himself even if he didn't get the needed vote. So everybody took notice that Newt came out of nowhere and did okay. Yeah, even as a Republican.

Yeah. Former Gingrich campaign treasurer, Kit Carter, had this to say. You got to remember, we had a long-haired college professor. He wore glasses. His name was Newt. He was a Yankee. and he had no connections in the community at all. And to take a guy like that and to win 47, 48% of the vote was pretty incredible.

So the loss was not unexpected, and he went in knowing that your first campaign is a harder sell, but he was, you know, a nuke geared up for the next fight, heading up to Wisconsin in 1975 year I was born, to attend election campaign classes run by a conservative activist named Paul Weyrick, who a few years earlier had co-founded a think tank you might have heard. of the Heritage Foundation. Oh no. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,

Project 25. Uh, they're the worst. They gave us Obamacare too, actually. Yeah, well, which isn't great. How's that going? Exactly. Newt ended up dominating the discussions in this election class. So even though there's a student in the class, he's talking as much as the guy giving

the lecture, and he impressed the hell out of Wyrick, who had this to say about this. Quote, I made a conscious effort to make Newt a star of the concerned. conservative movement. We had magazines, bulletins, and I got him featured on the cover of everyone. No one had ever heard of him. I made an effort to be Newt's promoter, unquote. So again, he's like, this guy's got

the juice. Great. They saw Newt's potential. They saw what a potential fucking piece of shit he was. If you just hear me incoherently scream, just know, it's because I no longer can

articulate words for how much I think he sucks. So, Newt refined his message for the 1976 rematch against John Flint, speaking out against a proposal for national health insurance. Of course. Because, you know, trust me, that's an old conversation that keeps coming up and being shot down like we're at a fucking skeet shooting range. And Newt also wanting the United States to take a hard line against the evil communists of the Soviet Union. You'll also love that he endorsed a state's rights approach to abortion. Because this is it. Because this is pre-Rovey Wade.

Yeah, well, you know. And now we're post-Rovey Wade, so there you go. We live in hell. Newt even got a bump from conservative hero and racist shithead Barry Goldwater. Ah. But still lost the race. Yay. Richard Nixon's shadow was still all over the Republican Party.

And here in Georgia, a nuclear physicist and peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter won the hearts and minds of a nation and took the Democrats pretty well as far as Georgia goes. Yeah, well, I like Jimmy Carter. Me too. He was a good dude. Rest in peace. You know, it's like, I want Georgia to remember Jimmy Carter. I would love it if Newt Gingrich could just die.

He's old and he sucks. Won't be long. All that said, our boy lost by less than a percentage point. So Newt smelled blood. in the water and knew that his day was coming. So he got even clubbing. He got within a hair, photo finish, close race.

So Newt didn't slow down. He kept giving speeches and fundraising. He kept beating his drum about corruption in American politics, positioning himself as the ethical champion that the House of Representatives needed. Meanwhile, old man Flint wasn't crazy about his district, which was no longer exclusively a bunch of racist hicks, and decided not to run again.

So suddenly, the like the suddenly no more incumbency he has to go up against so this might shock you but with all this focus on politics newt wasn't great at his day job being a college professor yeah so while his lectures were popular newt never published his research and was regularly absent for campaigning so he in west georgia college parted ways yeah he was let go we were decided to go in a different direction with somebody who's going to like be here and care about the actual this job and not using it as a stepping zone so he can be one day president of the United States. Yeah.

But now Newt doesn't have a job. They live in a little house with shitty furniture and are now forced to rely exclusively on Jackie's paycheck as a public school teacher. Oh yeah, I'm sure that. And guess what? Public school teachers in Carrollton, Georgia in the early 1970s and you're a woman. Yeah, you don't. I'm like, shit.

So, yeah, with two failed political campaigns and one ex-job, you can imagine their marriage was going great. Yeah, I mean, you know, don't fuck kids. I'm glad, you know, it's like, I'm sorry that their marriage didn't work out or whatever, but, you know, fuck her. She seems just as terrible. Didn't, it wasn't a great, auspicious start when it's like, yeah, your student in your math class is your, your, high school.

It's icky. So, Newt needed to think outside the box, a phrase he loved using for his students back when he had those. In fact, he even did the stupid think outside the box thing with a piece of paper. I'll describe it in next episode, but it's one of those things he uses that tries to blow your mind until you realize how fucking trite and stupid it is. So any guesses how he could raise some money to keep his dreams alive? Car wash, bake sale, what do you think he's going to do? Oh, God. Probably something fucking terrible.

So after two promising campaigns, Newt approached a wealthy donor named Chester Rosh. He wanted to write a novel. And his idea was to write a novel based upon a possible land war with the Russians coming after NATO. And so it sounded good. Two or three of us offered to help him financially with some seed money and ended up about 14 or 15 of us.

So Newt grabbed a check for 13 grand and took his family on a European vacation for research purposes. Oh, my God. And Bambi, I'm terribly sorry to tell you that you will never get to read Newt's incredible masterpiece about the Soviet invasion because he never wrote it. Yeah, that surprises me not at all. Again from his former campaign treasurer Kip Carter. I think the primary focus was to keep him alive till the next campaign. He is, I don't write well either, but he's not a good writer. Anybody's ever read anything he's written knows he's not a good writer.

I don't think there were any illusions that he was going to write the Great American novel. Even though funny enough, Newt has now written a whole bunch of books and a bunch of them are on our mom's shelf. Oh, God. However, the donors had set things up so that Newt was effectively a tax shelter, and he had the money he needed to keep his family going through the 1978 campaign. 13 grand was more than his salary had been at West Georgia College. So he basically just took this guy's money and fucking fucked off. But they also knew the whole point of it was just to keep, they wanted,

because they wanted him to run because he was going to be in bed. Because these are all businessmen that he's going to be in bed with once he wins. So it was always just a fucking scam. But they were in on this scammer's being scamming. The former professor also decided to hit up the Republican National Committee for money. He set up a meeting with a deputy chairman, a guy named Eddie Mayhe, from burning down the house. Quote, when Mayhe entered his office, he found Gingrich seated in front of his desk. May he peered through his Coke bottle glasses at the mysterious gentleman in the madras jacket and polyester pants and thought,

how did this dork get in here? Even though Mahi had a busy day ahead of him, he sat down and asked Gingrich what he wanted. Without missing a beat, Gingrich delivered a three-and-a-half-minute monologue about how the Republicans could win in southern districts that had been solidly democratic via the story of his own campaign. Mayhe was hooked, unquote. So once again, Gingrich storms into somebody's office and pulls his magic, just like he did when he was a kid and went into that city planner's office to talk about a fucking zoo. Oh, God.

This is what he does and he's really good at it. Got to give him credit. He's got the gift of gab. He's a salesman, really. You got to admire the hustle, if nothing else. And he walked away with $50,000 toward his campaign and a team of real election people with actual experience. And there you go. And you will love the name of his new political consultant, Bob Weed.

He doesn't deserve to have. Bob Wee. Light one up for Bob Weed, because Bob Weed gives us some juicy quotes later. Bob was probably the guy who got Newt to stop looking like shit, starting with dropping some lard and getting a damn haircut. From author Craig Shirley, quote, the used car salesman ties, shirts, and suits had been banished, hopefully burned, and the large sideburns had been 86th, along with the steel rim glasses. He was now photographed in attire befitting a young. politician on the go. Red ties and solid blue, gray, or black suits, unquote. Okay, yeah. So he stopped looking. Because he looked like a hippie college professor,

but the nerdyest kind with really thick glasses and the big bowl cut with the side burns. He's not even the cool college professor. He looks like ass. I mean, not that nude ever looked great, but at least he looked like a politician by the time, you know, after Bob Weed got a hold of him. Yeah. Well, you know. Which is ironic because Newt didn't actually like actual weed when he tried it. That's because he's a person that needs control. He also is deeply uncool and repelled by anything that might be. Fucking dork.

So America in 1978 was a lot more receptive to conservative messaging. The economy was in the toilet, and America seemed on the downward slide. And President Carter was perceived as weak. So Newt went all in on the hip new conservative ideas, especially about the economy. Oh, trickle down economics? Is that where we're getting to, Jamie? Yes. Did you know that if you cut taxes for the rich, it will encourage investment and entrepreneurship? And that if there's some short-term budget deficits, it's all good because the whole economy will grow and grow and just automatically generate balanced budgets, even surpluses, and all of us are going to be rich. That's right. As you said, supply-side economics.

trickle-down economics as popularized by Ronald Reagan, the plan that George H.W. Bush called... Anyone? Something D-O-O-O economics. Voodoo economics. Like, even Bush knew that this was horseshit. Like, yeah, cut the source of revenue, but magically, revenue increases.

Or you get in more and more debt, as we have now, to where just our interest payments alone that our grandchildren will be having to help. hustle for forever in the various minds working for the AI-powered robots. At this point, you know, maybe the robots need to be in charge. We have the dumbest people in charge. Just because it's never worked in the last 50 years, it's just because we haven't given them enough tax cuts yet.

We've taxed them to zero. We pourers are too selfish to starve to death for the long-term economic gain. The Dow at one point was over 50. 50,000, family. It's not. And not anymore. That's for fucking sure. The rest of Newt's platform might sound familiar, including things like deregulating businesses, welfare reform, opposing the equal rights amendment, which still has not been made into the

Constitution to this day, because that's supposed to be equal rights for women. It's related to equal pay for equal work and all that shit. Yeah, yeah. Since we love to run on it. We don't want to fix it. Still ain't a thing. Yeah, Newt wanted more funding for the mills. military and continuing to shit on Jimmy Carter for giving away the Panama Canal, which both of us heard are dead ranting about.

Oh, my God. Like long... The only reason I know about that fucking Panama Canal. Long before Let's Go, Brandon, there was bitching about Jimmy Carter giving away the Panama Canal. Imagine people having control over the waterway in their own country. So, Newt went from having environmentalists volunteering in his first campaign. to taking large donations from an oil company. Yeah.

One that had a bad history of pollution, no less. Yeah, no, because, you know, why they don't have conviction, they're pieces of shit. So, yeah, by the time his third, that's where he'd gone. He kept banging the drama about government corruption and proclaimed, Tip O'Neill's title should be changed from Speaker to Dictator of the House. Oh, my God. Now, Bob Weed had a simple framing. This is a quote from Bob Weed.

He had a simple framing for what could have been Newt's last shot at politics, running against a moderate Democrat named Virginia Shepard. Quote, my take on it is we run this straight as a left-right race and we're the conservative. She's the liberal and that's 90% of the race, unquote. Kind of like now. So, and Newt was all in on the politics of fighting, including and especially fighting dirty. in a speech to a group of college republicans at the atlanta airport he told them to get nasty and not to be afraid to get in a slug fest told them to raise hell all the time i want you all to learn a lesson when you see somebody doing something dumb say it you don't help your party any by sitting off to the side and saying god i wish you weren't so stupid you weaken your party and when you say it say it in the press say it loud fight scrap issue a press release go make a speech unquote.

So you're just, what, harassing people at airports? Well, no, he was giving a speech. This was just the location of his speech to this group of young college students. It was like a political... Go, go forth and be shitty to one another. He was already teaching young dudes how to be better little Republicans. So they attacked Shepard as a radical feminist who was willing to destroy her own family in pursuit of political power. All while framing Newt, as a...

a devoted husband and father and a churchgoing family man. Even his wife Jackie was reluctantly recruited to help write letters and talk to people while dealing with fucking uterine cancer. Does this give you a flash, Rex? Fucking. Okay. Continue. Lee Howell reported it this way.

I personally don't think that she wanted Newt to run a third time. I know that she probably wouldn't want to be involved in it. She just overcome her first cancer operation. summer before that campaign. But when he made the decision he was going to run, she threw herself into his campaign and worked as hard as she could. And wrote the famous letters of let our family represent your family in Washington. Ugh.

Yeah, because we couldn't possibly let a woman heal from cancer. The campaign played up the contrast between the two families. Mother Jones reports on this campaign ad in an article that should have destroyed Newt's political ambitions all the way back in 1984. But Mother Jones was only, wasn't super widely circulated, so nobody showed absolutely devastating expose

that this guy did. Quote, under the Shepard photo, the ad said, if elected, Virginia will move to Washington, but her children and husband will remain in Griffin. Under the Gingrich photo, when elected, Newt will keep his family together. Unquote.

Gotta love a family man. So yeah, the whole thing was, was Shepard's husband owned a local business and their kids were already in school at a certain age. So she decided it'd be better for a family for them to stay behind and then she would just commute back and forth and soon. Lots of politicians do that. But because this again, this is the 1970s and portraying a mother willing to abandon her children was a way to get in on a woman for daring to actually try to have a man's job. Yeah, he's like, I'm going to drag my family with me. So now let's talk about Newt as the family man again from the same Mother Jones article.

Quote, One former aide describes approaching a car with Gingrich's daughters in hand, only to find the candidate with a woman, her head buried in his lap. The aide quickly turned and led the girls away. Another former friend maintains that Gingrich repeatedly made sexual advances on her when her husband was out of town. On one occasion, he visited her under the guise of comforting her after the death of a relative and instead tried to seduce her, unquote.

What a piece of shit. So, wife's still recovering from cancer shit. Yeah, and he's cheating on her. He's getting blow jobs with his daughters just 100 yards away. Yeah, because he's such a family man. Meanwhile, yeah, attacking this woman because she simply was going to commute and let her husband keep their family business and keep their kids in the schools that they like. Yeah, what a terrible, terrible woman.

Can't let women, you know. And also made his wife write all kinds of letters to talk about what a great duty was. While he was doing all of this shit. I don't like it. I'm against it. So the campaign race-baited by portraying Shepard as being close to a controversial civil rights activist. They made fun of her weight. And at the end of the campaign, Newt falsely accused her of campaign finance violations.

Oh, yeah, that doesn't sound familiar at all. What? You get a little bit of a whiff of George Wallace. God, what a fucking monster. Newt won the election by eight points. Not even close enough for a runoff. So suddenly, Newt was a big deal in national politics. Because he flipped a long-held Democratic stronghold.

The RNC appointed him to head a new task force. And as a junior house member, he arrived in Washington with three stated goals. Quote, defeat the Soviet Empire. replace the welfare state, and replaced the Democrats as the majority party in the House." The little guy with a big head was finally on his way. Kip Carter remembers how quickly Newt decided he had moved on from the people who supported and helped him. Quote, I was sort of chiding him about not staying in touch with the people, Carter says.

He turned to me in my car and he looked at me and said, Fuck you guys! I don't need you anymore. I've got the money from the political action committees. I've got the power of the office, and I've got the Atlanta news media here in the palm of my hand. I don't need any of you anymore, unquote. Oh my God, what a bitch. Yeah, such an asshole's like, yes. I know, now that I've moved my up the ladder, I will simply step on your face.

Fuck you. Thanks for all your help. Now, before we get into Newt, heading north to take over Washington, D.C., let's take a moment to talk about the end of his first marriage. I know that's going to shock you. It didn't work out between the high school math teacher and her former student. Oh, it's, yeah, I'm shocked. So, only 18 months after he put out an ad promising to keep his family together, filed for divorce.

By this point, Jackie had undergone cancer treatments, put up with Newt's multiple affairs, and still actively campaigned for her husband, and presented him as this church-going family guy. But now this, from the PBS document, quote, Newt had won by shedding his old politics and his old profile. And many of his old friends, the reformers, the environmentalists, the liberals, would feel betrayed. And Jackie, the loyal political wife, would soon be discarded as well.

A little more than a year later, Newt demanded a divorce. Now this is from Reverend Brantley Harwell, Gingrich's minister. Jackie did not want the divorce and was humiliated. bitter, angry. Yeah, no shit. Now this is Lee Howell. She was in the hospital, and that

he came to visit her, and that while he was visiting her, he pulled out his legal pad and wanted to talk about the divorce settlement. As he was fixing to leave, the girls were there, he was fixing to leave, and asked her if they might discuss some of the division

of the property and alimony and that kind of thing. And that's when she really got angry. And I can see Jackie getting angry. I can see any woman getting angry. She's already anguished enough. Unquote. Oh my God.

He's such a piece of shit. Yeah, he literally had come in there and had hit, like, demands for what he wanted out of the divorce and wanted her to sign it on his legal pad in while she was bedridden right after getting a tumor yanked out of her. Now, I will say this about this incident, because this one became kind of an urban legend. And to this day, there are lots of stories

about Newt's serving Jackie with divorce papers on her deathbed. This story became so infamous that their daughter, Jackie Cushman, wrote a short article titled Setting the Record Straight in 2011 that pointed out that her mother was still alive at the time of that writing and that the divorce was already underway at the time of this infamous incident when Newt pulled out the legal pad. So he couldn't even just wait for his wife to die. He had to humiliate.

He had to be shitty to her first. Yeah, well, she didn't die for decades. Oh, okay. She, in fact, as you'll see, the article is clearly damaged control for her father without resorting to lying, which is why it's short and sweet. But fuck Newt. Again, from the documentary. And this is Kip Carter, former treasurer speaking. Okay.

It wasn't long after that that, you know, Jackie was supposed to be getting alimony and child support, and he refused to pay. And so Jackie and the kids were down there in that house with no food and, you know, electricity and water and all that sort of stuff. So at the First Baptist Church and some other places in town We took up money and we took up canned food And took it down to the house so that she could keep the lights on And keep the kids fed What a piece of shit Again, I don't need you anymore

He's the worst fucking person I mean, I If he did that to his daughter And then decades later she writes this article To try to soft that'll defend him Yeah Well fuck you too then But yeah

Sorry So, when asked by reporter David Osborne about his soulless hypocrisy, Newt's defense sounded like this. Quote, I think there is a level of personal life that is personal. I had married my high school math teacher two days after I was 19. In some ways, it was a wonderful relationship, particularly in the early years. But we had gone through a series of problems, which I regard, I think legitimately, as private.

But which were real. There is an 11-year history prior to my finally breaking down, and short of someone writing a psychological biography of me, I don't think it's relevant, unquote. Oh, so his personal life isn't relevant because he's a man. But other ladies was 100%. Yeah, everybody else is fucking fair game. Yeah, I see.

It's not fair to judge nude for getting blown at all of his campaign rallies with his girls over being babysat by an aide. Well, I mean, he just left him to starve. Fuck this guy. Fuck this guy so hard. For single mothers everywhere. Fuck you. Folks back in Carrollton, Georgia,

were disgusted by Newt's 180 on being a family man. Yeah, no shit. Because he immediately was getting a divorce right after he got elected. The reporter Mary Khan described him thusly. Quote, Newt uses people and then discards them as useless. He's like a leech. He really is a man with no conscience.

He just doesn't seem to care who he hurts or why, unquote. Yeah, I agree. That was 1984. But don't you worry about Newt getting lonely, though. Six months after his divorce was final, he married a pretty 28-year-old blue-eyed brunette. He'd met at a fundraiser in Ohio, Marianne Ginther. This is the woman I'm not.

I had pancakes with every Saturday for one fateful college semester. Ah, yeah. And I can tell you this, her attitude toward him shifted from the beginning to the point where I'm... I'm sure it did. Burning down the house describes their early relationship. Quote, Gingrich loved the fact that Marianne believed everything he said, finding his promises to remake American politics persuasive and exciting, unquote. Yeah, he was a real good liar.

Yeah, his first wife was older than him and probably is way less impressed with his bullshit, and now he wanted somebody who hung in his every word and thought he was, you know, a genius. Yeah. And again, that's probably why this is not going to work out. What? You don't think this one? You don't think this is true love number two? No. I think the only true love Newt Gingrich has is Newt Gingrich.

Oof. So, in one of just many, many acts of stunning hypocrisy, in nineteen eighty three the future speaker called for two members of congress to be expelled for having affairs with house pages when called out he said this quote i would say to you unequivocably that it would probably sound pious and sanctimonious saying it i am a sinner i am a normal person i am like everyone else i have ever met one of the reasons i go to god is i ain't very good i'm not perfect unquote oh you're not perfect It's cool when you do it, but it's totally not cool when somebody else. Other people should be fired for this sort of thing, even though I'm literally doing it right around the corner right now all the time. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. What a piece of shit. So Newt's personal life was a mess, and it seems that his rise to power did not make him one bit happier. Good. He gained weight, but then dieted because he knew it wasn't great to gain weight when you're a politician getting on TV. So, and he hated dieting. So he was in a bad mood. his early partners in political campaigns had been replaced by yes men who hung in his every word and acted like every shallow catchphrase was written on granite by god himself and he couldn't stand them

losing his temper at them over and over again and then writing apology notes and then the whole thing happening again president ronald reagan was writing a wave of popularity after a lunatic shot him for the love of jody foster and net was able to push through huge tax cuts the ones that newt had been cheerleading for years. Newt celebrated when the president fired the striking air traffic controllers, which has never been a bad idea, has never causes any problems ever. Fucking hate it. Like, we've never recovered from Reagan during that, and now we're at crisis levels, where airports are literally shutting down because we don't have them. Yep.

There was deregulation and more military spinning, just one thing after another on Newt's dream checklist. That would never, ever cause any problems for us or our country or the economy, just nothing but wins up and from then all the way to now. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. In the Wall Street Journal in 1981, Newt had made a prediction. Quote,

We have the chance to bring about a half century of right of center government, unquote. And it pisses me off that he was right. I mean, that's exactly what we've had. Yeah. Yeah. We've now had, you know, good near fucking 50 years of this shit. Yeah, and it sucks. It sucks.

It sucks. Where the best we get is some neoliberal. just sort of doing a few things over here and over here. A little nudge here, a little nudge there, because they're all fucking corporate goons. Mm-hmm. When political consultant Mark Rosenberg asked him about his goals as a member of the House, Newt didn't talk about legislation or taxation or accomplishments he wants,

he only said one thing. Quote, his immediate answer was his objective was to become Speaker of the House. Unquote. And with that goal, his North... star right there firmly in the horizon. That is all the newt we have for today. Oh, so I'm just going to be screaming into the void until next time. Yeah, so tune in next time to find out about how Mr. Gingerich torched all the old standards and norms on Capitol Hill and created a precedent of using ethics investigations to

destroy fellow politicians, something that would absolutely deliciously bite him in the ass. And in between that, we had to hear a little bit about the college course. I took that was all part of his downfall. So, uh, thank you, everybody for listening. And again, thank you to Kevin and Ravenstown Studios,

even though, uh, you're currently under construction. Yeah, we'll be, I hope it's up and running soon. We miss you, Kevin.

Yep, see you soon there. Uh, visit chainsawhistory.com to check out this and other things we do. Find out ways to support the show. If you listen to the value of series, you get to hear Bambi read cheesy 80s children's biographies to me.

And if you listen to No Time for Love, Dr. Jones, you get to hear about the life of Indiana Jones and all of the historical people and stuff he bounced off of during the shows and movies and other media. We also have the back catalog, bonus articles, and more. Normally, we do a little charity round here, but I'm doing something a little differently today because we're going through some rough times as a country and as a world. So instead of giving out like a specific charity with a link like I usually do, I'm encouraging you just to go look at your whole. local homeless shelters and food pantries and find out ways you can either help out with direct gifts or you can give some time and help out directly. Yeah, I think the never alone food pantry is the one located in Cherokee County. That's cool. There is more food and housing insecurity than we've seen in a long time. So we just need to watch each other's backs and local is often the best way to help.

Yep. Hopefully, you know, the world will. end. But don't worry. Before Newt can be finished. Yeah. Next time you get to find out how Newt helped try to destroy the welfare state entirely.

Bye. Bye.