The Dispatch Podcast - Newt Gingrich: ‘We Must Win’ | Interview

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, author of March to the Majority and host of Newt’s World, joins Jamie to debate foreign policy, Donald Trump, the media, and coup d’états. The Agenda: —The preservation of Israel —Going all in on Ukraine —What Never Trumpers miss about Donald Trump —Who is the “establishment” and who is not? —The assassination attempt —How will history remember January 6 —The left-wing drift of the media —Was Joe Biden forced out by a coup? —Technological and biological advances Show Notes: —Letters of Jonathan Netanyahu —A trio of books on real age: Michael F. Roizen’s The Great Age Reboot, Nir Barzilai’s Age Later, and David Sinclair’s Lifespan —Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive —Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and weekly livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Conditions apply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Td Bank knows that running a small business is a journey, from startup to growing and managing your business. That's why they have a dedicated small business advice hub on their website to provide tips and insights on business banking to entrepreneurs, no matter the stage of business you're in. Visit td.com slash small business advice to find out more or to match with a TD small business banking account manager. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm James. My guest today is former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. He is, of course, the former

Speaker of the House. He is also the author of a recent book, March to Majority, which is out now. It tells the story of the 16-year campaign to win the first Republican majority in 40 years in 1994 and how Congressman Gingrich ultimately became the 50th Speaker of the House. But in our conversation, we talk about many different issues, including the state of the Republican Party, kind of the dynamic of never-Trumpers versus what he is these days, which is a ardent supporter of Donald Trump, what his conversations with Trump, the split within the party about Ukraine, which the speaker is an advocate of supporting, and also his relationship with the BB Netanyahu and the recent speech that BB Netanyahu gave before Congress. We get into a lot of

lot of different topics here. What is the establishment is another topic that comes up that we have a big dialogue on. I think you're going to find this conversation interesting, and I hope it's an example of how people who disagree with each other can have interesting conversations even when there are strong disagreements. We also get into a little debate over January 6th. So without further ado, I give you Speaker Newt Gingrich. Speaker Gingrich, welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm delighted to be with you. I want to begin with yesterday.

We're recording on Thursday. Yesterday, Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke to a joint session of Congress. I presume you've known Benjamin Netanyahu for probably decades, I think, is probably not. Since the mid-1980s. Yeah. What did you make of his speech? Have you talked to him since October 7th? What have you made of his leadership?

And let me just add on to that. There have been some conservative leaders in Israel who blame him for the intelligence failure on October 7th. How do you view how he handled October 7th in the aftermath generally? Well, there was clearly an intelligence failure. of extraordinary proportions for them to have been that surprised on the South for a variety of reasons, I think. But that's a piece of what happened. I think that his strategic instincts are right, that this was an opportunity and a necessity to destroy Hamas. And that despite all the

efforts Israel had made to manage a relationship with Hamas, including a lot of things they'd done through gutter. The fact is, in the end, Hamas really does mean what it says. It's a long-term policy goal is that not a single Jew will remain. So you can have temporary truces in between massacres, but you in the long run cannot coexist with Hamas because their real goal is your destruction. And I think he decided that this was a moment where the anger of the Israeli people called for a destruction of Hamas and that there was an opportunity that the world would accept

a very significant campaign. Now, I think where he probably underestimated is that urban campaigns are always very hard for a variety of reasons, but fighting in cities is a terrible thing to do, and that it inevitably involves very large number of civilian casuals, no matter how careful you are, and that the world has a very limited patience for that,

and that limit is compounded because Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, have developed a worldwide network of supporters and sympathizers who instantly shifted from the massacre and the horror of October 7 to the pain being caused to Palestinians by the Israeli response. In that sense, he probably found Israel more isolated than he wanted. But I think his principle, which goes all the way back to David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, which is that Israel has to worry about Israel's survival. It can't afford to worry about other people whose survival is not at risk. And I think that's the underlying principle that led there.

The other thing you have to remember is he is in substantial trouble. in terms of being in the courts. The Israeli courts are very liberal. They've been trying to trap him much like what happened with Berlusconi in Italy. And so he's been fighting for his life in the court system, and the war was to his advantage. And for a while at least, he was able to build a unified government. And I suspect if there were an election, he probably would still win. because I think he's the only real war leader they have at the present time

that people have some faith in. And at a time when Hezbollah is becoming more militant in the north, when the Houthis are beginning to launch long-range drones all the way from Yemen, I think there's a deep Israeli feeling that this is a moment of genuine crisis about the very survival of the state. And that, as he showed yesterday, I mean, if you want a warrior, I remember that his brother was the only Israeli killed at Entebbe, when they rescued the hostages. So, and that Bibi Netanyahu himself was part of a very special, very elite unit in the Israeli army. So he is a warrior.

I mean, it doesn't just look like a warrior or sound like a warrior. He is a warrior, and I think most Israelis still think this is a time when you need a warrior. The other problem you have is people say, well, why don't you go to a truce? Well, the fact is, Hamas has never agreed to a truce. I think, frankly, there are relatively few hostages still alive, and I think that Hamas is really embarrassed and thinks it would be at risk if the world realized how many people had died while in captivity. And Hamas wants a real truce that lasts a long time

so they can rebuild their military capability. Israel wants a short truce so they can get the hostages back but not allow Hamas to rebuild its military capability. So that's part of why that's always been a much harder problem than the Biden administration thought it was. That's a long answer, and I apologize for going on. Well, you mentioned Bibi Netanyahu's late brother, Jonathan, Yonatan, anyone listening, I recommend his letters from Yonatan Netanyahu are very powerful to get kind of inside the mind of the Netanyahu family.

Have you talked to Beebe since October 7? No, I'm not. You know, maybe less so in the United States, but within Israel, commentators that, you know, the historian Martin Kramer, that are usually associated more with the right than the left, have now kind of turned on BB, you know, before October 7, perhaps he was known for, you know, the economic reforms as economic minister and the Abraham Accords. Do you think the failure on October 7th will be his legacy? Well, I think it'll be a big part of his legacy because it was such, it's so horrendous. No one on October 6th would have told you it was possible for Hamas to launch

an assault on that scale to kill that many Israelis and capture that many Israelis and others. And so I think the scale of the shock, because of the difference in the size of our countries, they had the equivalent of 40,000 people

killed. If it looked at the scale of America, imagine we'd had 40,000 people killed and another eight or 10,000 taken hostage in one day. Now, we were shattered by 9-11. which is about 3,100 debt. So imagine the scale we're talking about

in terms of Israeli society. And inevitably, that will be seen looking backwards as the most defining moment of his career, even though, as you point out, he had a very long career. He's very successful in turning Israel into an entrepreneurial society. And a great deal of Israeli wealth

comes from Netanyahu's economic policies. And the fact is it's a model for how a country can become technologically very advanced and remarkably successful in the world market. I want to turn to Ukraine, Mr. Speaker. There's obviously debate within the Republican Party on what to do in Ukraine. From my reading of your writings, you believe that the U.S. should be arming the Ukrainians against the Russian invasion. You know Donald Trump. I wonder where do you think his mind is? Well, I think Trump does really believe that had he been in power, that Putin would never have attacked Ukraine.

And I think he believes that his first mission would be to end the war just to stop the violence. And so he would probably be more in favor of a truce in place than Zelensky is. On the other hand, Zelensky has, I think, no practical strategy for driving Russia out of eastern Ukraine. I mean, I think the manpower, even if we gave him our best weapons, he'd have a very hard time going at Russian defenses in the eastern part of Ukraine. And I can tell you this from conversations. I suspect that his approach would be to say to each of them, if you do not agree to a truce, I will offer maximum support to the other side. So in the case of Zelensky always has to say is, if you don't agree to a truth, I'll cut off your aid. In the case of Putin, he could say, if you don't agree to a truce, I'm going to quadruple.

the amount of aid that goes to Zelensky, and they'll start getting it late Tuesday. We won't have a bureaucratic Biden-style gradual activity. But I think his goal would be to stop the shooting, stop the killing. I mean, I've read that you would have gone further than the Biden administration and allowed Ukraine to shoot into Russia, to attack into Russia. And do you, I mean, hey, do you think that that is a, you know, Donald Trump would go that far if he, if the Russians were uncooperative in coming to a peace? And two, what are the risks of that instigating a larger war? Well, I rely very heavily on Herman Perchner, who is the head of the American foreign policy council and who's made well over 100 trips to Russia, speaks fluent Russian and has knows many, many people going back to the Soviet period. First of all, I think if you're going to have an ally, you want them to win, whether it's Israel and Gaza or it's Ukraine. And Ukraine became our ally for a purely selfishly American reason. We do not want Russia on the Polish border and the Romanian border.

And we don't want Russia to be bold and decide that we're weak and they can take Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. And if you look at Putin's statements over the years where he said that the collapse of the Soviet Empire was one of the great tragedies in the 20th century history, like you said, the greatest tragedy, he clearly would like to reassemble the initial imperial Russian Empire. So there's a real danger if he gets away with something in Ukraine that he will just continue pushing and continue trying to. to expand the Russian sphere of influence, and that begins to be really dangerous. So I start with the premise that if you're going to side with an ally, make sure they win. I mean, what you want to communicate to the world is, if America's on your side, you win. If you take on America, you lose. And frankly, that reduces the number of challenges radically.

The greatest worst of all dangers is to be sort of semi-in. We'll help you a little bit, but we won't let you win. which I think has been literally the Biden policy. The second, if you're going to send them things, send them quick. Don't take six months a year, two years. I mean, I saw an article today that I think two of the countries, Denmark, maybe, and Holland, are going to send 12 Leopard 2 tanks. Twelve.

Now, you know, it's nice to have these tiny countries do what they can. But, you know, when you go back and you think about the scale of real tank warfare, I mean, 12 is like a long morning. And I think that there's this whole notion that the Ukrainians have never gotten either the equipment nor their permission to use the equipment that would enable them to decisively defeat the Russians. And I think you have to take a risk. You can't start with the idea that because Putin has nuclear weapons and we're always going to have. end up backing down. I mean, that guarantees the Russian army will be on the Atlantic coast of France. So you have to say, look, if you want nuclear, it would be the end of your regime. And it would be horrible and be terrible. And we suffered tremendous losses. And that would be crazy.

And this idea of mutual assured destruction has worked now for 80 years. And I think we have to be prepared to say, if you're determined to fire, to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure, to hit Ukrainian children's hospitals, to go after civilian targets, then we are going to allow our allies and enable our allies to cause you as much or more pain. And you just have to decide, because otherwise, you set up this totally one-sided occasion where the Russians routinely kill innocent Ukrainians, and we do nothing about it. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to follow up on something you mentioned a little earlier, that you said that Donald Trump believes that if he was president, Putin would not have invaded Ukraine.

I wonder, do you believe that, knowing Putin, that he was deterred? Yes. I think Xi Jinping was deterred. I think Kim Jong-un was to deter. Look, Trump is inherently, almost genetically, a very tough person. person. He almost epitomizes being an alpha male. And I think he communicated that to these guys. He has the bigger military. He has the bigger economy. And he is prepared to go to the wall. You know, I thought it was no accident that the first time he met with Xi Jinping for dinner was at Mar-Largo.

And halfway through the dinner, he asked to be excused for a minute, went outside, briefed the press, came back in. said, we had just fired Tomahawk missiles at Syrian Air Force bases, and he had to brief the press, and he apologized. Well, the signal of that to Xi Jinping, I mean, they scheduled firing the Tomahawk missiles

during the dinner with Xi Jinping, to allow Xi Jinping to understand, these are, the Trump doesn't talk about words. Trump describes, you know, look at Soleimani. You know, they tracked him down, they figured out where he's going to be at the Iraqi airfield. They targeted

him, they killed him. And supposedly, they sent the message to the Iranians that if you retaliate, we have 46 target sets in Iran that we will hit simultaneously. So we urge you not to retaliate. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future

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were involved at all in the lobbying for various candidates. Oh, I talked a little bit with the president about candidates, but I look, I have great trust in Trump. I think he is intuitively one of the smartest people I've ever worked with. I think that he has been working and thinking about all this for years. He, remember, he was first asked by Oprah in the 1980s if he was someday going to run for president. I have friends who did polling for him in the 90s about whether or not he should run for president.

So it's not like he showed up on Tuesday as an amateur. There were four or five candidates that could have been chosen. Each one sent a different signal about what Trump was trying to accomplish. And I think, I think J.D. Van, is very smart. I think one of the things to remember is that the advance as a very junior Marine

and serving in Iraq came to the same realization as Trump, which is we had no strategy. We were having people get killed for no purpose, and we weren't winning. And I think that's objectively true. It's true in Afghanistan, true in Iraq, was true in Vietnam.

And so they're very cautious, and they sort of personify Reagan's sense that you either do very little or you have a massive overwhelming force, but you don't get involved in long, drawn-out conflicts. And it was under Reagan that Weinberger developed a set of principles, which Colin Powell later expanded on, about when you fight and how you fight and what you're doing. And I think what Vance would say is that he is skeptical of the way in which the American military approaches this. He's even more skeptical of the way in which the Biden administration approaches it. And he doesn't want to see young Americans get killed for no good reason. And he doesn't want to throw away billions in a corrupt country for no good reason. Those are not irrational concerns. Mr. Speaker, but I mean, I guess what he actually has said,

at least when he was running was he doesn't care about Ukraine. I think he was on Tucker Carlson and he said, you know, honestly, I don't give a damn or something along those lines about Ukraine. Well, I think what he would probably say is he cares more about the American border

and he cares more about China. And that's a rational long-term argument. I don't worry about it. I mean, I think Trump does care about Ukraine and I think Trump's policy on Ukraine would be very aggressive and aimed at decisively ending the war. Mr. Speaker, you know, I was hoping that when I knew that you were going to come on,

I was interested because you're one of the more interesting political minds in politics. Donald Trump has run against a who's who of who was supposedly top, you know, Republican politicians and contenders in 2016 and 2024 in primaries and has won easily. I wonder if Speaker Gingrich ran a, against him in 2016 or 2024, how politically you would have tried to stop him? Was there a way that any of these contenders could have stopped Trump that if they message their message different politically? Because there was all sorts of, you know, in 2016, Mike Murphy in a $100 million operation, you know, no one has been able to defeat Trump in any of these primaries. Look, I think I'm a

reasonably good student of politics. And I'm pretty happy to tell you, I think, I think Trump is smarter than I am, and I think that he had intuited, partly from very extensive polling, partly from his own experience at The Apprentice, he had intuited a hunger among the American people for somebody who would break out. I mean, I look back at my own effort to run for president in 12, and I realized that I didn't have the nerve to be as aggressive as Trump was in basically breaking away from the entire current system and saying that it's all wrong. And I remember calling him at one point in just before the South Carolina primary, and Trump was busily attacking the war in Iraq. And I said, you know, George H.W. Bush is, I mean, George W. Bush is at about 80% approval among South Carolina Republicans. So why are you picking a fight? Which indirectly brings in a guy who's at 80% approval. And he said, you know, thousands of young Americans died. Tens of thousands were wounded. And it was wrong. And if that means I lose the nomination, I can live with losing the nomination, but I'm not going to back off. I think the war, the way it was fought was wrong. Well, I thought that's leadership.

I mean, it makes you wonder about his political calculus, but it is leadership. And I think that instinctive, you know, Trump is probably 90% instinctive and 10% traditional Wharton School management. What would you say, Mr. Speaker, too? I mean, there's many of the listeners to this podcast, me as the host included, are, let's say, Trump's skeptical, at least, probably go further than that, never Trumpers and are unlikely to vote for him, even if we have conservative tendencies,

who see Trump a little differently than you. What do we miss about Trump? I mean, you said that, you know, he's been preparing this all his life. A lot of us would say he seems unprepared in many ways, other than maybe politically where he knows what to say at the right moment. What do you think people like me and a lot of the listeners miss and don't understand about Donald Trump? Well, look, I think there's a legitimate question about which lens you're looking through. I believe Trump is the most remarkable opponent to the existing establishment since Andrew Jackson.

Are you part of the establishment, Mr. Gingrich, though? Some people would say as a former speaker, you would be part of the establishment. No, I was never part of the establishment. That's the whole point. I mean, I went from Goldwater to Reagan to the contract with America. I took on George H.W. Bush when he sold out and broke his word on taxes. I was never acceptable to the Bush's because I'm not part of the establishment. I think some people would argue by virtue of becoming speaker, you then become part of the establishment.

That confuses power structure with establishment. They're very different. I was once part of the power structure. You could argue at one period, I was the second. Can you explain then? This is a topic that's interested me for a long time. I once in an article many years ago, what is the establishment? I called George Will.

I went all around trying to figure out what the establishment. I think there was a very funny article by John Kenneth Gailbraith about the establishment which met secretly in some hotel room or something, all of a tongue-in-cheek. It's a very funny article. Because, I mean, people often speak of the establishment, and it's kind of an ill-defined sometimes amorphous thing. What is this establishment? And if not a president who is in, oh, the White House or a speaker who achieves, you know, becomes speaker, if they're not part of the establishment, I guess who is part of the establishment? Well, I would say two places to look are the novels of C.P. Snow, who was a physicist, parliamentarian novelist, who captured brilliantly British politics and the subtleties of British politics.

and the TV shows and books of Anthony Jay who did Yes Minister and yes Prime Minister and was a chief advisor to Margaret Thatcher and most of Yes Minister was actually modeled on specific real events in the Thatcher government and if you watch Yes Minister you'll understand exactly what the establishment is in the British model the establishment is the senior civil servants

whose job it is to protect the system from elected politicians who don't know what they're doing. And there are scenes that are hysterical in which the senior civil servant is explaining to a rising junior civil servant, of course we don't tell them the truth. I mean, after all, who are they to know these things? They're not us.

We are the mandarins who are supposed to run the place and they're simply the figureheads. and it's brilliant stuff. So, Mr. Speaker, just so I guess when you say establishment, some people mean like the GOP establishment. This sounds like what someone would call the administrative state. John Bolton used to have a joke that he represents the American desk at the State Department during the Bush W. Bush years, meaning that, you know,

everybody else was captured by whatever department that they were in. You mean kind of long-term civil servants. No, but they're a piece of a relationship. It's the long-term New York Times reporter who is close to the long-term CIA agent who feeds him total lies about Russia, Russia, which the reporter then has to publish, because after all, we're all in this together. And so it's the people in the Pulitzer Prize thing who give the New York Times and Washington Post Pulitzer Prizes for publishing things that were absolute lies. Totally false. But it was in a good cause. It's the 51 intelligence officers who signed a totally false letter about the hunter's laptop, because after all, defeating Trump was on behalf of a moral cause. So what did it matter that those of us who had been entrusted with the nation's secrets were lying to our own country?

It is a collective sense that there's an in and an out. And the end, you know, part of the end is the whiff and puff song. being able to be part of skull and bones. Part of the end is, you know, and it's no accident that you have a guy named Robert O'Malley who was in grammar school with the Secretary of State. And then the Secretary of State happens to be

in law school with Obama, and they all take care of each other. They're all part of the same group. They understand they're the ends. I mean, would Bill Buckley be part of the establishment? I mean, he's obviously skull and bones. I mean, I guess I'm just wondering if it is it a uniparty or something. Buckley's a good example, though, of how it begins to break down.

Because Buckley was part of the establishment. That's why he could be Buckley. He both had his father's wealth, and he had the natural respect of the old order. But Buckley was, in fact, trying to break out of the old order. I mean, when Buckley says at one point, I would rather be governed by any random group from the phone book, than by the Harvard faculty. He's really beginning to break away from the system that had dominated America, at least from FDR on. But then is it fair to say, Mr. Speaker, under how you're defining the establishment? This is where I think it's so tricky, is that, I mean, I would say that

both Speaker Johnson and Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, would not be part of the establishment because they don't come from the skull and bones kind of secret society type of. And the question is, and this is what marks the Never Trumpers from the Trumpers. Okay. The Never Trumpers really want to be the right wing of the establishment. They want to be the insiders. I mean, Bolton's a good example. I know John well.

He's a good friend. But in the end, John wants to be part of them. So you think that was the motive? You think he wants to be part of the establishment? Because he's always been kind of, you know, he wasn't. He didn't get confirmed at U.N. secretary because, you know, of his, you know, wanting to knock 10 floors off the U.S. I mean, he's always been pretty, pretty, you know, non-friendly to what you would call the State Department school and bones community, if you want to call it bad. But in the end, he's more comfortable within their worldview than within the Trump worldview. And then the Trump worldview is a decisive break with what has been the dominant thesis of this country for, you know, 90 years. And yet, when Trump was running for office and you asked him, who does he listen to in foreign

policy, the only name originally that he would give as a concrete name was John Bolton. Right. Because he saw him on Fox News. Right. Just as he got his military advisors from Fox News. He did, though. So, I mean, yeah, well, I mean, it's a very interesting conversation. But let me, let me move to a different topic. But I find that a fascinating question of who is the establishment, who is who is not? Have you talked to Trump? since the attempted assassination. And if so, do you find that he is a different person, as some of the reports suggest?

I have talked to him. I think it's fair to say that he really believes it was providential. He really understands that if he had not turned his head at exactly the right moment, the bullet would have entered his brain, and he would be dead. And that's a, I mean, that's a pretty, life-changing, sobering moment.

Do you think it will change how he campaigns? It will change how he got. I mean, there was this narrative going into the invention that he's going to throw out his speech. And maybe for the first 30 minutes of his speech, it was a different type of tone. But he went back to the old campaigning style. Do you think this will change how he governs,

how he speaks, how he, how he campaign? I think it will broaden his. willingness to relate to and listen to people beyond his normal circle. But look, this is a guy in his 70s who has been astonishingly successful, financially successful, successful in popular television, successful in winning the presidency coming out of nowhere, successful and enduring. What I think now is a nine-year war in which the left has methodically tried to destroy him for nine solid years. So to ask him to drop all the skills and habits which have enabled him to be dominant despite everything is pretty silly.

I mean, he is Donald Trump. He's going to behave like Donald Trump. He may be a little more profoundly shaken. He may be a little more thoughtful about what does God intend. I mean, Liz and I did two movies, one on John Paul II and one on Reagan, where Reagan and John Paul the second meet. And part of their initial conversation is, why did God spare them? Because they'd both been shot. And so they were comparing notes on what did God intend. And they had both concluded that God had a larger purpose for them. And then as they talked about it, they decided that purpose was to destroy the Soviet Empire. And they agreed to form an active alliance to undermine and break the Soviet Empire. Have you told Trump that story? And I wonder how he responded.

Well, I'm not going to get into it. I very seldom talk much about what I say to Trump. But he knows that story. And he, I don't know. I don't know. Again, he didn't end up, Both of them ended up in the hospital. In both cases, they were very, very life-threatening wounds. Of course, in Reagan's case, it was caused by a nut. And in the Pope's case, it was almost certainly a Turkish gunman hired by the Bulgarians on behalf of the KGB. So a rather different level of threat.

But my point is just, I think it does influence him. I think at one level that it makes him more thoughtful. But again, running against Kamala Harris, he has to be the definer. I mean, NBC News and the New York Times are not going to go out and tell you the truth about Kamala Harris. So if Trump doesn't do it, who's going to do it? One other area, I think there's probably a big divide between the never-Trumpers and let's say those who are on board with Donald Trump is January 6. You were critical of the January 6th committee.

I wonder what your thoughts were about what happened on January 6th and how you think history will remember it. Well, I don't think history will remember it as quite as big a deal as the left would like it to be. I think it was a riot. It was clearly not a coup. It was not an effort to overthrow the government. These were mostly a bunch of the combination of clowns and tourists. But there was no serious systematic effort to overthrow the American government. Would you make of, like, the John, I mean, I know that, I don't, I mean, traded, I know you traded some emails, but the John Eastman plan, I mean, do you not see that as an attempt, even if it had a little bit of a chance of succeeding to try to remain in power after.

Sure. I mean, I think, I think they sit down. And I can tell you, I was at the White House election, and Clist and they were both there. And there's this weird moment where Trump is well ahead and around 11 o'clock, five or six key states quit county. I mean, it's a very weird thing to live through. And I'm not making any allegations. I'm just saying, if you were there and you were living through this, you would just say, this is really weird.

But, Mr. Speaker, in the lead-up, in the lead-up to the election, it was almost scripted that way, that there are certain states that, you know, will come in later than others. And it's likely to be states that were more favorable to Joe Biden. I remember reading in Axios in a lot of places that that was likely to occur where you see Joe Biden have more votes towards the end just by the nature of who's counting. Well, let me give you two pieces of discordant information about elections.

In August of 1973, I said to the Atlanta Constitution, Republicans have to win by 4% to offcome the theft. Well, that's a, I mean, that's a lot. I mean, so you think you, one would think you could prove 4%. I mean, that's a lot of votes. No, you can't necessarily. No. So I'll tell you a personal story. It's 1964. I'm a student at Emory. I drop out of school to run a congressional campaign in the 9th District of Georgia, which is North Georgia. It's the area

where they made the movie deliverance. And I go up there as a young Army brat, born in Pennsylvania, and I'm very fortunate I have a wealthy candidate who wanted to get away from his father-in-law's company and running for Congress was the way he did it. We happened to pick the only district in Georgia that Goldwater lost because it was an old FDR TVA district. So we're up here in the mountains of North Georgia. And we're running against the dean of the delegation. Well, the dean of delegation had a huge amount of power. And on election day, I discovered that Fayette County is not counting its votes.

And Fayette County was very rural. It was the last county in Georgia to have a lynching in 1949. So I called the chief of clerk And it was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon And I said, I understand You're planning to not count your votes today And he said, well, you know, all my folks are tarred And they've worked all day long

And so I'm going to send them home to have dinner And there's no point in bringing them back tonight So we're going to get together at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning And we're going to have sausage and biscuit and coffee And we're going to count the votes. Well, I'm this innocent, naive, young outsider who thinks that the rules apply. And I say, you know, this is a presidential election. You can't not count the votes.

And he says, well, I don't think you understand it. My folks are tired. And I am not going to make them stay here. So I say very courageously, I'm coming over there. Now I'm like 21 years old. He says, son, I hope you do. I've heard a lot about you. I'd love to meet you.

My cousin, the sheriff, has a place you can stay. And in the morning at 8 o'clock, we'll give you coffee and biscuit and sausage, and you can watch us count the vote. I decided, well, you know, I didn't really need to go over there. Now, what they were doing is simple. It's exactly what happened with the Brooklyn, with the Bronx machine with Roosevelt in 1930. But Mr. Speaker, I mean, the last point on this, I mean, in this day and age with with all the cameras and all the press.

And we're talking, you know, election across the country and you need to flip three states with tens of thousands of votes. It would have to be quite an operation to. I don't think the election was stolen. I think it was rigged, but I don't think it was stolen. But by the way, I think you can't look at the totality from the $420 million that the founder of Facebook put into turning out votes selectively in Democratic. precincts to the big social media companies cutting off the New York Post because they didn't want

to cut, they didn't want reporting on Hunter's laptop. I mean, you go through all the things that were done to rig the election. And I have no doubt that this was, you talked about an establishment. This was the system absolutely determined to stop Trump from getting reelected. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style.

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Well, let me actually, let me ask you something that you may. It seems like, well, you don't think January 6 will be that big in history as an overthrow. You were critical in your response of those who participated. Oh, yeah. You know, Donald Trump. I think if they broke the law, they should go to jail. Donald Trump started his campaign with the January 6 choir releasing a song. promised a part in them. I mean, you seem to have a difference here. You think they're criminals,

those, those, those, well, I think they brought, by definition, they broke the law and therefore the criminals. I don't think in any way they set out to overthrow the government of the United States. But I think, I think what they did was wrong. It's a lot like the people yesterday who were a union station defacing statues and burning the American flag. They're criminals and they ought to go to jail. Most people say, they, I would say they should go to jail. Those are those, especially that, you know, attack the police officers, I guess do you think it sets a bad precedent when you have the January 6th choir open a presidential campaign and put them on a pedestal like that? It isn't the way I would have done it. On the other hand, when you look at some of the people

who have been locked up for a very long time and you compare that to the treatment of people during the summer of 2020 who were looting and burning buildings and in some cases killing people, there's an amazing difference in how the criminal justice system dealt with the Black Lives Matter rioters and how they dealt with the people at the Capitol. My response would just be, I think both sides should be punished. I do think trying to go to the Capitol is... I agree with that.

But I do think going to the Capitol is a little bit higher scale of what was occurring. Then burning down a building? Let me ask you this. I had Elliot Cohen on here. You're probably familiar with Professor Elliot. He wrote a recent piece in the Atlantic, how the Trump foreign policy very well may not be the second term as apocalyptic as some of his

fellow never-trumper's will be. But he did have a line in there that where he thinks the danger of a second Trump term will be domestically, things like prosecutions against some of Donald Trump's enemies. I know that you mentioned that you think that the January 6 committee might have violated some laws. Donald Trump has changed his tune a little bit, but he did open his campaign talking about he'd be seek vengeance or he would be the vengeance of those trying to go after his people. Do you think people like General Millie, January 6th committee members, do you think they could be prosecuted or deliberately targeted by a second Trump administration? I doubt it. I mean, my hope would be, and the president has said this on a number of occasions,

that our goal should be the application of the rule of law. I think people who are genuinely criminally doing something, should legitimately be at risk because they're genuinely criminally doing something. But I don't think he should make an effort. Us politicizing the law the way the Biden administration has politicized the law, I think would be a disaster for the country. But some of the people I mentioned, like General Millie, people that were critics of Trump that he was mad at, do you think, do you think? Oh, I don't think we'll go. No, he's not, I don't think he'll go after Millie. Look, I mean, I think there's a lot of things that Millie ought to be asked about from how they totally screwed up the Afghan withdrawal to his total inaccuracy about

how long it would take the Russians to get to Kyiv. He thought it would be four days. You have to wonder sometimes about these things. But I think Trump will have so many big things that involve the future that he's not going to be drawn much into fighting over the past. How about January 6 committee members? I mean, at one point you mentioned, you thought they should be in prison. I think, particularly I think in the case of Liz Cheney, the degree to which she consciously manipulated the system and did things that they were designed to totally mislead the American people. I think it's pretty horrendous, but I don't think that means you want to put her in jail. Let me maybe close on the topic of the state of the media. But I want to, you're

famous for, I remember it very well during the debate, I think it was John King at CNN, but I want to talk about the conservative media. And I guess my first question is, do you think with the rise of conservative media that Republican candidates need to spend less time even approaching the mainstream media? My early connections to the media started when I was 11. and I had a great training by a guy named Paul Walker and Harrisburg who ran a local weekly paper and he really was in the tradition of Frank Kent who was the great political writer at the Baltimore Sun.

So my natural bias is to love the media, to think that it's an amazing, fascinating process and to have played a role with the media for literally my whole life. from the time I was 11 on, so 70 years. I think the degree to which the media has drifted to the left is astonishing. It's actually first captured in an article in a chapter in Theater of White's making of the president in 1968. I mean, there's a whole chapter on the drift of the media towards a monolithic left-wing view. And that's just gotten radically worse over the last 50 years.

I think, so we had to try to figure out how to survive with virtually no conservative media until you began to get the rise of local talk radio, and then you got the rise of Limbaugh. But Limbaugh is 1988. I mean, Reagan has survived and prospered in a world in which there's virtually no conservative outlets per se. And then you had this explosion of conservative talk radio, the rise of Fox, et cetera. But my view, and then I think of you what, they looked at my phone call list, I talk to the post all the time. I talk to the Times all, you know, if you don't talk to reporters, how do you expect them to learn anything? So I cheerfully take phone calls from, you know, a lot of liberal institutions.

I have my critiques of the mainstream media. But I wonder in the conservative media, if there's any concerns. Some narratives that with this new kind of media ecosphere, I think of there are a whole narrative that the raid on Mar-a-Lago, there was the FBI was doing it pushed by Biden to assassinate President Trump because there was orders of standard, I guess, FBI orders to carry guns. I wonder if that type of stuff is concerning to you, where these narratives run wild and seem then to become true. I mean, that true should become common knowledge. They don't become true, but they become the base of activities that can be dangerous. Sure, of course. You know, I mean, I think we've sort of balanced off now.

You have nutcase left-wing media, and you have nutcase right-wing media. And then you have this glob in the middle. Well, let me ask you what, I saw your appearance on Fox and Friends this morning, and square these two circles. You got up, you got up very early. Square these two circles for me. you were saying that what occurred Joe Biden stepping down as a coup, but you also said it was frighteningly obvious he's in cognitive decline. If a candidate is in cognitive decline, shouldn't they withdraw from a presidential race? Look, it was candidates in cognitive decline,

and they decide to withdraw from a presidential race? And the convention has an open opportunity for 4,000 delegates to choose a report. placement, that would be a sad moment, but not a coup. If a candidate doesn't want to step down and has the crap beaten out of him at the directions of Pelosi, that is a coup. But if he's in cognitive decline, and he might not even be aware that he should be stepping down, right? I mean, So Pelosi was doing the nation of favor by applying as much pressure as she could to create a vacuum as a San Francisco politician, that she could then fill by having a San Francisco radical leap from the vice presidency, the nomination. But you don't, but you don't think that has some

resemblance, you don't think that has some resemblance to a coup? No, I think it's kind of, there was a lot of a left-wing tax on the right, claiming rightly that were a republic, not a democracy. So there's a party nomination process, and obviously a lot of people rallied around There's no party nomination process. This is nuts. I find it hard to believe you're going to make this argument. There are 4,000 independently elected people who had nothing to do with the decision. Nothing.

But you think that he should step, he should have stepped down. Oh, sure. But I think the Democratic Party should have been honest a year ago and had an open convention process. Right. But considering he was where he was. They did all lie. Well, I think, I think that there's a real question that there were a lot of people. There were a lot of people who knew he was declining.

And I think it's very sad, by the way. I think there's a big question. I think it's a fair attack by the Trump campaign. What did Kamala Harris know and when did she know it? And if he really is an issue, I think that's great. And you don't think, because, of course, you're against conspiracy theaters. You don't think that having a San Francisco boss like Pelosi, who is, I think, one of the most remarkable politicians of our lifetime, an amazing speaker. And I say this is somebody who once did the job.

She's amazing. You don't think having her crowd out the existing incumbent to replace him with somebody from her own city is a little weird? Well, she's the vice president. So, I mean, I think that she was naturally the frontrunner, and it would be very difficult for someone to. And she might, although if you look at how bad a candidate she was in 19, you could imagine that in an open convention, she might or might not have won. You don't know. But don't you think what really, like, wasn't Nancy, Nancy Pelosi might have gotten a Biden to step down, but it was how quickly the potential competitors, you know, immediately gave her the endorsement.

Right. Do you think Nancy Pelosi? I mean, you're a potential competitor. You look up and you go, okay, the fixes in. Why would I get bloodied taking on the entire machine? Convention, I mean, I guess, are you against the convention system? I mean, like the old smoke film? No, look, I'm for legitimate conventions.

I'm for the primary system. I mean, this is the most explicit repudiation of the primary system since Theater Roosevelt won all but one primary and lost a taft who had won all the conventions that weren't primaries. But by their nature, would you admit that these primary systems are not democratic? In theory, these delegates can go and they might have. Look, I think we're a republic. I agree. Which is why I don't think it's a coup. Because this is the system. No, yeah, but you missed the point. If the 4,000 delegates chosen locally had collectively decided on this behavior, it would be fine. That's not what happened. What happened was a handful of very big people, people at the level of Obama and Pelosi, decided that, and I think they set up the debate. I'd really love to know who talked Biden into the debate.

debate. Because I think the set up the debate is a test. If Biden could survive, he would still be the nominee. If Biden couldn't survive, they were going to get rid of him. And I think they knew that from the minute the debate was talked about. I mean, I think you used the term coup d'etat. And you would admit that that term probably in a historical reference would probably not exactly meet this. This isn't, you know, CC coming in and taking over from a bar. So So this is a, how about a coup to possession? By the way, as a child, I was in France when the paratroopers came back and killed the Fourth Republic.

So I have actually seen a real coup. Let me ask you one more question about the conservative media. You were a long-time pro-Israel supporter. There are parts of the conservative media, and believe me, we could talk about what's happening on the left and anti-Semitism a lot. But there are parts within the conservative media. Candice Owens, my former boss, comes to mind, Tucker Carlson, that are becoming increasingly anti-Israel in a way we haven't seen in a long time.

Are you concerned at all about the anti-Israel creep within the Rojolokin Party? Yes. I think one of the great dangers for Israel is that it can win kinetic battle after kinetic battle, gradually lose the cultural and political battle, and ought only be not viable as a state. I think it's a very great danger. I had David Bragg on. I don't know if you were familiar with him. He used to be the executive director of Christians United for Israel. And he said his worry, because he's dealt with those

communities a lot, is that the younger, younger Christians are actually becoming less pro-Israel than, do you see that? I mean, that to me seems like a particularly worrying. The turning point for Israel was in the early 1980s when they went into Lebanon. and they went from being David to being Goliath. And they were no longer the underdog. And from that point on, they've had a substantial problem because they are the wealthiest country per capita. They have amazingly, in the Middle East,

they have amazingly high technology. By every reasonable standard, they're the dominant military power. And therefore, it's very hard to be sympathetic to them. And I think that I think this is a grave, I just gave a speech on this, which we're going to publish as an essay on the strategic question of the long term survival of Israel, I think it's a grave threat to the survival of Israel in the long run. I said we're going to close in the conservative media, but actually I have three final questions that are fun. I think you're going to enjoy these. If you were made president with powers of a king for a day, what three policies would Newt Gingrich push through that you think would set America on the path? to leave the 21st century again. Let's see. I'd give everybody ice cream in the hopes of establishing a level of happiness

that they would decide to reelect me. I think there are three big zones or four big zones I really want to emphasize. One is what Elon Musk is doing with the starship. If that works, and we start getting to a daily reusable, hundred passenger or 150 tons of cargo on a routine basis. That's 30,000 people a year. We will have broken loose. And I think that whole zone is one that we really underestimate the value of. Second, there are breakthroughs in biology. Some people have estimated that, I can't remember his name right now, but the guy who talks about the singularity said the other day that

he thinks the person, the first person who will live to be a thousand years old has probably been born, that the breakthroughs in biology on longevity are now, and I've done several podcasts to this, are now so startling. There's a new book out on real age, which argues that a 20-year-old today, on average, will live to be 120 and have the, you know, the biological capacity of a 60-year-old because of all these breakthroughs that are coming down the road. So biology is a zone that I think is enormously important. And then artificial intelligence, mass computing, whatever you want to call it, the ability to deal with very large-scale behaviors. I co-chaired a three-year study on Alzheimer's with Senator Bob Kerry.

and one of the great challenges in brain science is that your brain has about the number of synapses that there are stars in the universe. So astrophysics and brain science have very similar math problems. And you need an amazing level of computational ability to truly understand the brain. And that's all, that's just one example, but it's all coming down the road. And those are things. I would try to reunify the country by the magnet, by the focus on excitement and opportunity and creating a radically better future for all of us. And I think that that would do a lot more than having conferences where we sing kumbaya. You're a voracious reader. Are there three books that you can point to that most shaped your worldview? Well, oddly, Drucker is the effective executive

probably did more to give, teach me the things. And I recommend it to everybody. It's a paperback and it's available. I urge people to read it, underline it, and reread it once a year to you understand it. But probably did more to effectively empower me to be able to get things done. I took Deming, Edwards Deming wrote a book, but it's not, it's hard to read.

But I took a 90-hour tutorial from Deming on the application of quality, and that had a huge, huge impact on me. I think beyond that, I read voraciously, and there are many different things that I find intriguing. I'm currently working on the question of if the asteroid had not hit and the dinosaurs had not disappeared,

how would life have evolved? And there's very interesting stuff done by some serious paleontologists. So, you know, I'm deeply invested in history. I used to read Toynbee's study of history, which is a sign that I was really a nerd when I was young because it's a really heavy, you know, 12-volume sort of Cambridge graduate school level stuff. But it taught me a lot.

It was one of the things that really shaped my worldview. I think Benjamin Netanyahu often talks about that history. And finally, is there a historic figure you can point to that you admire most? Well, I mean, other than Christ, who is a figure of faith, supernatural. I think of the Americans, I'm the most awestruck by Lincoln. Second would be Washington for different reasons. But Lincoln, it's hard to imagine how rapidly Lincoln evolved

once he got to be president and how much he knew. And, you know, by 1864, he is a better general than any of his generals. And this is a guy who, he had a law firm with one partner. That was his management background. Mr. Speaker, thank you for joining to this special podcast. Glad to be with you. You know,