The Megyn Kelly Show - Why JD Vance is Far Ahead of 2028 GOP and Dem Contenders, and Newt Gingrich on Trump's Unique Appeal - Next Up with Mark Halperin

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

Megyn brings you the latest episode of Next Up with Mark Halperin, on JD Vance's dominance, the Dems' weak field, and Newt Gingrich on Trump and the new GOP. Subscribe to Next Up with Mark Halperin:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-up-with-mark-halperin/id1810218232Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2f0n8G4xqUo8aGxbbbtRjHSocial:  http://nextuphalperin.com/

Hey, everyone, it's Megyn Kelly. Today, we're bringing you a full episode of our MK Media Show, Next Up, with Mark Halperin. Take a listen and go subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoy. Hey, everybody, welcome back to Next Up. Thank you for joining us for our 10th episode. We're very happy and excited about building this community and delighted to have you back here or here for the first time, whether you're watching on YouTube or listening as a podcast. We're very grateful to you and hope you'll spread the word about NextUp. Like, subscribe, do all that stuff as this program continues to grow. Next up here will be House Speaker, former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich.

He's written dozens of books. His new one is called Trump's Triumphs. He's one of the most interesting people in politics, and he's kept that status for several decades running. So we'll talk to Speaker Gingrich about his book, about Donald Trump, about how he sees the landscape on both the Democratic and Republican side, and couldn't be more delighted to talk to someone again who's one of the more interesting people I know. His story about Donald Trump's presidency is an intimate one because he's known Donald Trump a long time. And in 2015, he was very skeptical that Donald

Trump would be the Republican nominee. He saw others, including Jeb Bush, who was then the frontrunner, as stronger. We've seen surprises in presidential politics many times. In 2008, for instance, people said, well, no one predicted Barack Obama would be the Democratic nominee out of the blue, out of nowhere. Well, I have a different view. And I want to talk to you about 2028. Some people say it's too early to talk about the next presidential race. Well, I get paid to think about it all the time. But more to the point, I think there's some things going on now that we've never seen before. And I think they put the Republican Party in a very strong position. Doesn't mean they'll win in 2028. But I think on the current trajectory,

there's some asymmetrical advantages for the Republican Party that are worth noting, even at this early stage, because I've never seen a presidential race shaping up like this. And I'll explain why. I look for asymmetrical advantages. Sometimes the parties are roughly equal on candidate quality or roughly equal on fundraising. But when there's a big difference, when one side has a decided advantage, it's worth noting. And in this case, there are a lot of asymmetrical advantages in the Trump-Vance era that benefit the Republicans. And it's hard at this point, as weak as the Democratic Party is, to find asymmetrical advantages that

play in their favor. And so what I want to talk to you about is the challenge I see for the Democrats in making sure that as they get to late 2026, after the midterms and into the presidential year, that they've got a good chance to win. Because I think right now, again, on the current trajectory, they'll have a problem. 2028 will be a year, assuming Donald Trump serves at his full term, with no incumbent. And in the modern era, which I marked from when President Reagan was in office, we've had four cycles without an incumbent. 1988, 2000, 2008, and 2016. In all those cycles, we had a different dynamic. What we've never had before on either side is a vice president like J.D. Vance. Now, in three of those years, we did have vice presidents who were interested in running for president.

George H.W. Bush in 88, Al Gore in 2000, and Joe Biden in 2016. Okay. And in those cases, those vice presidents did not receive overwhelming support from their presidential, from the president who they served with. It's a big deal because presidents can put their thumb on the scale. This president can really put his thumb on the scale. If, as I expect, Donald Trump endorses J.D. Vance. That in Republican politics, since Trump became the king of the party, has been dispositive. It's rare for Trump to endorse a candidate who doesn't win. But it's more than just Trump's expected support. J.D. Vance has enormous advantages because we've never seen a vice president like this. Presidents Bush and Gore and Biden were treated by the West Wing, by the president's aides,

as people who should not be allowed to build their own political standing while they served as vice president. They wanted to. They were all ambitious. They all wanted to run for president. They knew that after two terms, assuming that Ticket was reelected, they would want to run. So they wanted to do the kinds of things you do if you want to run for president. Become acquainted with all your party's top fundraisers. Meet people around the country who are activists. Become highly visible on important policy issues. Get along with the president and the president's team. Build a network of advisors who could help run a presidential campaign. Bush, Gore, and Biden were not allowed to do that. And when they tried, they were smacked down.

One of the most remarkable things about the first few months of this administration is J.D. Vance has played his hand perfectly for setting himself up for 2028. He gets along with the president, with the cabinet, with the political advisors. He's made the top fundraiser for the Republican National Committee. That's never happened, to put someone like him, a vice president, in a position to interact regularly with the party's top donors. He's done it in Las Vegas. He's done it in New York. He's done it, I think, in a few other cities.

And that's a huge advantage, to be able to say to the party, I'm the man. I'm the one. And to know all the people, to know the activists, the fundraisers, et cetera. He has a huge, huge leg up. And I think it's possible, and this would be unprecedented, that he doesn't have a serious nomination challenge at all that no one runs against him or no one of any significance. And he'll have all the advantages of four years, again, on this current trajectory,

of setting everything up. And you look at how active he is on issues on national security how active he is on ai on on doge on the budget on every issue that's important on crypto it's going to help him raise money it's going to help him build connections and it raises his profile within the party if he doesn't have a nomination fight of any significance it's it will make him less battle-tested that's the one downside he doesn't have a nomination fight of any significance, it will make him less battle-tested. That's the one downside. He won't have the rigor building up the political muscles for fighting for the nomination. But the upside of that is he can raise hundreds of millions of

dollars, maybe billions, and put it all towards the general election. One guy raising all the Republican money, leveraging the power of the presidency and the vice presidency. Extraordinary advantage. What do we have on the other side? We've got a Democratic Party with, I think, a hugely overrated field. There's a lot of names on the list. I've seen lists of 20, 30 people who might run for the Democratic nomination. I'm sure not all of them will. But this is a bunch of very flawed candidates. I got nothing against them. And it's possible that one of them will emerge. But when people say, well, Bill Clinton emerged out of nowhere in 92 or Barack Obama out of nowhere in 2008, it's just not true. Both those guys were

touted for many, many years as a future presidential candidate and a massive political talent. This current group, again, I don't want to be impolite to them, but they're flawed. There's no one on this list who I look at today and say they're the front runner. And in fact, I can't even make a cluster. I ask people all the time, who are the three most likely Democratic nominees? Which Democrats would be the strongest general election candidate? I get all sorts of names, no consensus. And that is unlike any cycle I've ever covered. Even when there's an open race for a party nomination, no consensus. And that is unlike any cycle I've ever covered. Even when there's an open race for a party nomination, no incumbent president, there's always a sense of who are the most likely,

who are the strongest. I look at these candidates and I see no political athlete of a generation. I see no one with the capacity to do the things you need to do with a huge advantage to get the nomination or to win a general, raise the money, announce policies, dominate the media, et cetera. They're a skilled group of people, but they're flawed. And again, I see no one who I would say is a clear frontrunner or even a pack. So to try to look on the optimistic side for the Democrats, I thought about what are the traits that would be needed to win a nomination and win a general. And the strongest candidates do both at the same time. They run for the nomination on the same message they run for in the general. They use the same skills, the same team, et cetera. So I looked at the Democratic field and I said, could I build a

Frankenstein? Could I take a trait from all the leading candidates or many of the leading candidates and say, well, that's good. If the eventual nominee could have that trait from that person and build a cluster of great skills, well, maybe that's the way to do it. So here's my Frankenstein candidate drawn from some of the leading Democratic figures who may run. Some of these people may not run. But this is what talking to Democratic strategists, I hear, these are the kinds of things they think they're going to need to run against J.D. Vance, if it's him. Maybe fate will intervene, it'll be somebody else. But what do the Democrats need? So first, I start with Pete Buttigieg, the former Transportation Secretary, Mayor of South Bend. He has a really important skill that Donald Trump has, what I call go-on-anything confidence.

Pete Buttigieg can go on a sports show. He can go on a podcast. He can go on Fox. He can go on conservative media. That confidence to be able to go anywhere is something Donald Trump had in 2016. He went on MSNBC. He went on sports shows. And of course, in 2024, he went on a range of podcasts. So Pete Buttigieg has what I call the go-on-anything confidence that would be part of the Frankenstein. Second, California Governor Gavin Newsom. What does he have? He has a search for what's modern and an understanding. He is not tied to the past in terms of culture, society, technology, politics. He's always thinking, underrated for this, always thinking

about the future, about what's modern, what's next, what are younger people, what are Americans who are just tuning into politics, what do they care about, what do they think about? That understanding of what's modern is a huge trait, which again, the Democrat nominee is going to need. Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan, what does she bring to the table? She understands swing voters in battleground states. She's a popular governor in one of the biggest battleground states, one of the most important. And she has been pretty consistently popular in her state during rough times by understanding where those voters are. She understands they care about economics. She understands to stay on the right side of

cultural issues, massive advantage. And again, not every Democrat has that, particularly the ones who do not come from purple states. Rahm Emanuel, former congressman, White House chief of staff, mayor of Chicago, U.S. ambassador to Japan. What does he bring to the table? Fundraising capacity. I mentioned before J.D. Vance is going to be a monster fundraiser. He's going to raise hundreds of millions, maybe billions, and maybe be able to devote that all to a general election. Rahm Emanuel knows how to raise money. He did it for Bill Clinton back in 1992. He can raise money from his brother, Ari Emanuel, the Hollywood super agent. He knows all the rich Democrats in the country. Hugely important, huge factor to be able to raise enough money, particularly in a big crowded Democratic field, in order to fund a campaign. Amy Klobuchar, senator from Minnesota, she ran for president before in 2020. She's got something that I think is lacking a little bit. You saw my interview on NextUp with Gavin Newsom. Ambivalence. Too many of these Democrats aren't sure they want to be president.

Amy Klobuchar is determined. She has the determination. If she does decide to run, she will do what I think you need to do to win. You got to get up every morning and say, what are the 10 things I need to do today to win the presidency? And then you have to do them. And you have to do them with a fierce determination. I'll tell you again, part of why this field's underrated, you got a lot of younger folks with young kids. You got people who've never run before and have no idea what's involved truly in running for president.

Amy Klobuchar has that determination. That's an important trait. Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania, extremely popular. People have raised questions of late about him. I thought he might be the front runner, but people in Harrisburg and in Washington and People have raised questions of late about him. I thought he might be the frontrunner, but people in Harrisburg and in Washington and elsewhere have raised questions about his ability to deal with controversy, his willingness to hire strong people to staff around him. You got to deal with both those things if you're going to be a successful presidential

candidate. But what he has is the capacity to do two things at once. Mario Cuomo, the former New York governor, said you campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose. I think what Governor Shapiro has, which any Democrat would be smart to emulate, is he does both. He governs in both poetry and prose. He's very detail-oriented. He works hard at being a good governor

in terms of policy and process, but he also understands he gotta be inspirational and aspirational. And again, that's also understands you got to be inspirational and aspirational. And again, that's a trait that's going to be needed, whoever runs for president and wins on the Democratic side. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, not sure she'll run, but she has the it factor. She's interesting to people. When she talks, she passes my mute button test. If you see her on TV, you got the mute button on or your computer's on mute, you turn it up. You want to hear what she has to say. Let's be honest, a lot

of these other Democrats are pretty boring. People are not compelled to hear what they have to say. AOC has that it factor. All right, Gina Raimondo. She was Biden's Commerce Secretary, President Biden's Commerce Secretary, former governor of Rhode Island, not as well known as some of the others. But I'll tell you where she is well known, well liked and well respected is in the business community. This has become a huge asymmetrical advantage for the Republicans. A lot of business leaders have turned towards the Republican Party. They've always been part of the Republican coalition. But the Biden record on economics in particular really turned a lot of Democrats, business leaders off.

Raimondo is seen as a pro-business Democrat. She can raise money from them. She can speak their language. She can get their support. Hugely important. And again, part of the Frankenstein candidate. If you're the Democrats, you want someone who can speak the language of business. Ro Khanna, congressman from California, understands policy and how to connect it up to the real

lives of real people. You'd think anybody running for president would do this. But the Democratic Party has gone for several decades now without energized, without getting through new policies that really appeal to people in a basic sense. Generating those ideas by thinking about talking to real voters and thinking about what they want is something most of these candidates do not do. Even a lot of the governors, Ro Khanna understands you need policies that appeal to people that can be explained easily. Lastly, Wes Moore, governor of Maryland. He's said he's not going to run, but some people doubt

that. But I'll tell you what he brings to the Frankenstein table is an origin story, a biography. He grew up in a humble background. He served in the military. He was the head of a nonprofit that helps disadvantaged people. Having an origin story that you say to the American people, here's my life. It doesn't have to be humble background. Donald Trump, George Bush, hardly humble background. But you need a story to say, here's where I've been.

Here's what I've done. Here's what I've experienced. This is why I think I should be president. These are the ideas that I have. Wes Moore brings that origin story, that strong bio to the table. It's incredibly important to have these things. Now, I will say, who wasn't on my list? Kamala Harris. I thought

long and hard, what are the traits Kamala Harris has as a strong candidate? Bring to the table, name ID, something you don't necessarily get from most of these other candidates. But that puts in sharp relief the challenge I think the Democrats have. Even their more experienced candidates, even the ones who understand more of what it takes to win a nomination and win a general election, they do not have the complete package. Vance's flaw, J.D. Vance is not a perfect candidate, but the asymmetrical advantages he has, if he gets Donald Trump's endorsement, if he executes on money and policy and communication and building a center-right coalition, will make him very formidable. These Democrats are flawed.

You could run through all the ones I said listed their positive traits and list five or six negative ones that make it seem unlikely that they would win the nomination or win a general election. I will make this prediction. Someone's going to be the Democratic nominee. And unless someone emerges that I haven't thought of, it's going to be someone pretty flawed. But what Democrats say to me who have run and won presidential campaigns is whoever the nominee is needs to study the best of their colleagues, the ability to do the various things

that these 10 folks have and try to figure out a winning way to compete. Because before too long, it's going to be 2027, 2028. And on this trajectory, as I've said, J.D. Vance has an extraordinary set of asymmetrical advantages. And if the Democrats want to win back the White House, they're going to have to figure out how to build that Frankenstein,

not in the lab, but by having at least one of their candidates rise to the occasion. All right, we'll keep following that. Next up, my conversation with the former House Speaker, Nick Gingrich, right after this. Hey, everybody. Tax day may have passed, but for millions of Americans, the real trouble, it's only just beginning. If you missed that April

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it's always been. Newt Gingrich, thank you for joining NextUp. Delighted to be with you, as always. All right. So you've written a lot of books. The newest one is called Trump's Triumph. You've got lots to do with your time these days. Why did you spend time writing a book about Donald Trump? Well, it's actually about both Trump and the subtitle is America's Greatest Comeback. And in October, we sat down and thought about, I have a team that I work with, particularly Louis Brogdon and Joe Gaylord. And, you know, we were confident we were going to win. And we thought, first of all, it's an astonishing story, as you know, to come down the

escalator in 15, win, lose, win. Second, I was pretty convinced because I'd been working with the America First Policy Institute that Trump was going to be dramatically bolder than he was in his first term and that it would be bold in a general direction that would be the first real challenge to the Rooseveltian system since it was established by FDR in 1933. So I wanted to put a historic perspective on what we're about to live through and to both say in sort of part one, here's how we got here, which is Trump's triumph. But also, here's where America wants to go and what the American people are saying and why they stuck with him through everything. I mean, two impeachments, four efforts to put him in jail, two assassination attempts. You know, he's the only candidate in history who knocked the incumbent president out of the race by June, pivoted, and then defeated the incumbent vice president. So something was there that was bigger

than personality. As charismatic and as effective as Trump is, if he didn't actually have a MAGA movement, he would not have survived. So I think it's a combination of the movement and the man, and where will they take us? I want to talk first about the man and then the movement. You've known Donald Trump for a long time, but you've known him, tell me if I'm wrong, but I think I'm right. You've got to know him much better over the last decade than you did before. Yeah, I mean, I sort of generally knew him, and we actually joined Trump National shortly after he took it over.

And we would see him there back before he was a candidate. In fact, he used to feed Calista French fries, which was mildly weird, sitting around at lunch. But our first real political conversation was February of 2015 in a place you've been often, the downtown Marriott in Des Moines. We were there for a conference that on national security, Trump was there. And he called and said, hey, we're in the same hotel. Why don't we do breakfast? So he and Calista and I got together and he would watch me run for president in 12. And even though I'd failed, he understood that I knew a little bit about presidential campaigns. So we talked candidly about what would it take to run.

It was the first time I really began to realize that he'd moved beyond the amusing interview stage towards seriously plotting a campaign. And I've watched him ever since. Yeah, you know him better than I do. But to the extent I know him, I find the gap between what he's actually like and how he's portrayed in the media to be as big as almost anyone I've ever covered. I'm wondering how you can describe things about Donald Trump, particular traits or big themes that you think are not fully portrayed

for the American people. Well, I mean, let me say, I think that the closest analogy to Trump is Andrew Jackson. And when Jackson took on the entire national establishment, he infuriated them so much, and that included all the academic elites. He did not get a good biography until 1955 because he was just anathema. Trump has some of that same characteristic. He is such a mortal threat to the elites,

both at the New York Times and The Washington Post and Harvard, that they just can't – they can't bring themselves to cover the person because they're so angry at what they perceive that he's doing. I find him to be, first of all, stunningly smart. I mean I think I'm reasonably smart. I have no doubt that he is much smarter than I am. OK, let's I want to interrupt you and dwell on that one for a second, because I'm not sure he's smarter than you are. You might be able to be a little bit self-effacing. You're a very smart person, but there's no doubt you put your finger on something. You could read every New York Times or Washington Post story ever written about Donald Trump, and not one will say

he's very smart, but he is. So just talk more about there's different kinds of intelligence. How is he smart? Well, he's smart at three or four levels, some of which I just literally don't have. One is he's essentially intuitive. That is, he absorbs an enormous amount of information. He is the most existential politician I've ever seen. I mean, Nelson Mandela would be probably the closest parallel. Everything Trump does is in the moment. He is totally engaged, totally involved, and he's sort of schizophrenic in that part of him is thinking strategically

while the other part is totally engaged with you. And so he absorbs stuff, and he's absorbing stuff all the time. I mean, when occasionally I have a conversation with him, I realize that there are three or four conversations going on simultaneously in one conversation because he's thinking about this. And then he's overthinking about that. And things just flow. He is. Let me let me just stop you there because I just want to put a button on this because it's so important. One way he's intelligent, you're saying, is he has the capacity to think in the moment, talk in the moment, but be thinking about other things and kind of connecting them all up and processing them. Sorry, go ahead. And I think somewhere – and I think unless you – and you understand this even better than I do because you're a New Yorker and you and you went to school in Boston uh which I picked up the other day I thought was great uh you know moving from people don't get this moving from Queens to Manhattan is impossible

nobody in the Manhattan elites is going to accept some some newcomer from Queens who's brash and loud and rising. And so he spent his entire formative years being an outsider and wanting to be an insider. And I think finally concluding he ain't ever going to be an insider. So he would just get to be so big, they would like to be inside with him. And I think there's a very key part of what drives him. How does that speak to intelligence? Because I want to stay on that. Does that speak to intelligence? Yeah, because think about it. He had to sharpen all of his skills, whatever he thought he knew coming out of Queens.

He had to learn a whole new world, a whole new system. He described some of this in his two best books, The Art of the Deal and The Art of the Comeback. And there's one line when he says that he was going to redo the building, which I think is Trump Tower, and they were going to try to keep the Art Deco front. And the New York Times loved it and was nice to him until the engineer said, that's $3 million extra. At which point Trump said he didn't like the Art Deco that much. At which point the New York Times attacked him for three straight days. Well, he said the lesson he learned was he had lots of people suddenly call him and say, I didn't know you were doing condominiums.

And his conclusion was any media beats no media. And bad media is better than no media. And part of it is, and this is what I mean by his intelligence, not only does he learn from you and me face to face or on the telephone or whatever, but in the back of his head, he's building models. He had to build a model of Queen's Kid millionaire in Manhattan. And that was a model. This is how it works.

So he's constantly looking. I mean, I'm sure right now, for example, with Putin, that he's very troubled. And every model he had for how it was going to work has failed. And he is grudgingly moving towards a level of toughness that will shock Putin. Because Putin is mistaking patience for timidity. And I've seen this over and over again. The other part of that, and I don't know whether it relates to intelligence, he is as much of an alpha male as anyone I've ever seen. I mean, you take, and this is what Harvard's learning, you take him

head on, he will be compelled as an act of survival to take you apart. He'll have no choice. The way I think that that speaks to intelligence, and I'm going to give you a few others to comment on that I see, is he knows how to leverage advantages. He knows what advantages he has. He knows being an alpha is an advantage in most situations, and he sizes up and knows how to leverage it. Well, he doesn't just know how to leverage. He thinks ahead and understands that there are five or six different points going. So very often I find I'll be on point three and he's on point 11. Right. I'll give you three others and you can just say, yes, Mark, you're right. Or you can say I'm wrong or you can just comment on them. One is his ability

to size up people is as good as anybody I've ever seen. He just, he understands what motivates them. He understands how he can get what he wants from them. Two is he understands the media as well as any politician I've ever covered. You're pretty sophisticated about the media. Barack Obama is, he's as sophisticated about it as anybody I've ever met who's been in elective office. He does not have a blind spot about the media the way Bill Clinton did, for instance. And then lastly is he gets politics. He gets what the traffic will bear on an issue.

How far can he go within the Republican Party to lean towards being more pro-life, pro-choice on abortion? How far can he go on dealing with Canada? He just understands what the traffic will bear. Well, and remember, all of that's intuitive. Yeah. Although, as long as we're having this conversation about the media,

can you explain to me his fascination with Maggie Haberman? I can, but I won't. Part of it's the New York Times, but part of it is she pushes his buttons and he wants her approval so badly, but I can't fully explain it. The three of us- I don't know if he wants her approval or her attention,

but that's the funniest single dance I see him do in the media. It's a pretty funny one. Josh Dossier, now of the Wall Street Journal, is someone else who he's pretty focused on, I'm told. But Maggie Haberman of The Times, second to none. And I'll just say to button up the thing about Trump's intelligence, to me, one of the stories of Trump's success in the last decade is he's constantly underestimated. And you benefited from that at times, too. People, his opponents underestimate, say, well, Gingrich, you know, is too far right or Gingrich doesn't

understand this or that. And it allowed you to succeed. People, when I tell people Trump's smart and I've told I've said to people I know who are quite smart, you don't understand. Trump's smarter than you. You're very smart, I'll say to them, but Trump's smarter than you. And I've lost friends over saying that to them. And they just, they should accept the fact that they don't know him, and they'll have a better chance of beating him if they deal with him on the terms of reality, which is he's a really smart guy. You know, in many ways he's parallel to Eisenhower and Reagan, both of whom consciously underplayed how really good they were.

Yeah. Because they thought it was a net advantage. Yeah. And I think part of Trump's vaudevillian approach, and he's clearly a vaudeville performer, and part of that, I think, is a deliberate, how can you really be afraid of me? I'm just this funny guy. Yeah. And watching him take apart Jeb Bush psychologically was one of the master classes

in how really clever Donald Trump is. Yeah, absolutely. All right, you mentioned President Reagan. I often think, what would Thomas Jefferson think of my iPhone? If you had time with Jefferson, you showed him the iPhone, what would he think? What would Reagan think of Trump? They knew each other when President Reagan was alive,

but what would he think of Trump being a two-term president? How would he explain it? That's a, boy, that is a great question. I mean, I knew Reagan reasonably well, and I began working with him in 74. I think Reagan was as much a realist as Trump. And people forget he led the only strike by the Screen Actors Guild and was successful. He was amazing. He was more deliberative than Trump, more structured, I would say, than Trump. But I think Reagan would say, looking at all this, two things. One is that Trump has an enormous set of skills that make him uniquely formidable as a president or a candidate. And the other is that his opponents are just idiots.

I mean, I think Reagan would have said, you know, you give me Hillary Clinton, having run against Mondale and Carter, you give me Hillary Clinton, and then you follow it up with Joe Biden and with Kamala Harris. He said, I wouldn't be too shocked that Trump could beat them. Yeah. Let me ask you the Reagan question

in a slightly different way. There's only been two Republican presidents between Reagan and Trump, which is kind of incredible given the gap, both Bushes. And you and I both know what the Bush family thinks of Donald Trump. They think he's a Philistine who has destroyed the Republican Party and has no business being president. Would Reagan say that? Would Reagan say, I hate what Trump has done to the party? Or would he embrace what Trump has done to the party? That's what the Bushes would have said about Reagan if they could have gotten away with it. I don't know if 43 would have said that. Maybe 40. Oh, yeah. No.

George Shultz used to say that H.W. Bush eliminated every Reaganite in the first week. Well, but Bush 43 spoke fondly of Reagan. He did. Oh, sure. Maybe you don't think he meant it. But what would Ronald Reagan say about a guy who, I know this is your view because I've heard you say it, he's changed the party fundamentally.

He's moved the party from being a conservative party to being an anti-liberal party. But what would Reagan say about the impact that Donald Trump has had on the Republican Party? Would he embrace it? Or would he have mixed feelings? Or would he be like the Bushes? I mean, first of all, I think they lived in two very different worlds. And I think that's a big part of where we are. The left had to take us off

a deep cliff to make sense out of Trump. I would say Reagan, who had after all given 480 speeches to blue collar workers for General Electric over an eight year period. I think Reagan would say it's pretty impressive to finally have a Republican who actually understands and is part of a blue collar movement. Yeah. Again, Reagan was an FDR Democrat. Yeah. Just as Trump was a Democrat. I mean, these guys had a lot they could compare notes on. Yeah. Again, Reagan was an FDR Democrat. Yeah. Just as Trump was a Democrat. I mean, these guys had a lot they could compare notes on. Yeah. I don't know if you I don't know if you could quantify it, but it appears to me that Trump has moved the Republican Party to be more of a working class party than even Reagan did. Much more. And Reagan and Reagan was famous for having created the Reagan Democrats and and changing the image of the party. So I would think that perhaps Reagan would look in awe, respect, whatever, to say, wow, this guy from New York has moved.

I think Reagan would have said that what we did with the contract was standing on his shoulders, which it was, and that what Trump has done is the natural extension. I mean, it only occurred to me in the last couple of days. You really can't just talk about Biden. What you have is an Obama-Biden continuum, which took the country into a series of divisive and destructive patterns, which suddenly made Trump seem reasonable if you were a blue-collar American. Yeah. And so I think Reagan would have said, given the trajectory starting with Obama, Trump is a perfectly natural reaction. And it is terrific that he can communicate with and rally working Americans of every ethnic background. I mean, his ethnic reach is astonishing.

I want to talk more about that, but I want to button up on the history and then get to the present regarding the cultural changes in particular. No one, as far as I know, has written the comprehensive book about the following topic. You and I both say, and we're not the only ones, Trump didn't create the movement. He saw that it was there and he seized it. He got to the front of the parade and not diminishing the accomplishment, but the movement was there. And I look at the movement, and again, I go back to Reagan, because I think that's when the modern history of all these things began. I see Reagan. I see you. I see Pat Buchanan as three people who are part of the through line that led to Trump, not on the negative side, as you said, in reacting to Democrats.

Who are the other people besides Pat Buchanan and Reagan and yourself you'd put on that list? He's sort of forgotten now. But I actually think Goldwater was very formative. I mean, a number of young people who read Conscience of a Conservative and suddenly said, that's right, that's real, that's how the world should be. He had an astonishing impact in creating a party

which would nominate Nixon in 68. And Reagan's, as you know, Reagan's speech for Goldwater, which people can watch on YouTube as a time for choosing, is still, you can watch it today and it's totally relevant. I mean, Reagan was talking about universal truths that don't disappear. And I think a lot of what Trump tried to do, has tried to do, is pick up on a similar pattern. Trump is a deeply American patriot. Trump is a deeply American patriot. Trump is for the work ethic. Trump is for meritocracy, knowing that it drives the left crazy.

And Trump is for normal people. The moment when he went to McDonald's to give out french fries and then got into the garbage truck putting on a garbage collector's vest and walks into the arena with 50,000 people and says, you know, they tell me the vest makes me look thinner. Maybe I'll wear it for the rest of the campaign. That is an identification Reagan would totally have approved of. Now, Reagan was a movie star. I mean, Reagan was never, I mean, he may have been back in Illinois or at WHO in Des Moines, but by the time Reagan had become president, he was a movie star. He was part of the great national elite.

But he represented and could communicate with an amazing range of Americans. And I think he would say that Nancy used to feel very much that she was treated by Washington much the way Trump is. I mean, she was fairly bitter about some of the treatment that she took. Yeah. Is there anyone else? I take your point on Goldwater. Is there anyone else from the 90s, the aughts or the teens pre-Trump who you would say belongs in a history of the MAGA movement as being someone who who popularized its ideas, who generated ideas, who played on the national stage? I mean, one one of the amazing, relatively unknown figures is Grover Norquist. Yeah, I agree. The degree to which Grover and Americans for Tax Reform has spread the no tax increase pledge,

the degree to which you just saw it in action when there was a rumor floated about the possibility of raising taxes on billionaires and people came down hard and said, no, we are not the party that raises taxes, which, of course, was the great fight with George H.W. Bush. I mean, Grover has been one of the seminal figures in the modern conservative movement. By the way, the other person who, this may get her in trouble, but if you look at Brooke Rollins from the creation of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is now, I guess, 25 years ago, up through the American First Policy Institute, laid the base intellectually for what Trump has done in the second term and who understood bridging a conservative movement into, and you're exactly right, Trump is not essentially a conservative. He doesn't read National Review, which of course drives the National View editors crazy.

But Trump is the most effective anti-liberal in my lifetime. Yeah. You mentioned Grover Norquist, and I think it's a great addition to my list. He's a Washington organizer. He's not very well known outside of Washington. But I'll tell you two things that I think Grover did that are antecedents to Trump, besides holding the line on taxes, tax increases. One is he was one of the first people who made owning the libs a thing, right? Being anti-liberal as a unifying organizing principle, being against universities, being against the media, being against woke corporatism. And Trump inherited the energy of that. The other thing Grover did, and Grover's famous, he holds a Wednesday meeting in Washington with groups. And I used to have the privilege as a reporter of attending off the record.

It's the biggest tent you can imagine. There are people there who care about abortion, right to life. There are people who care about taxes. There are people who care about regulation. There are people who care about gun, second amendment rights. And Grover taught them, we gotta be a big tent.

You may be from a second amendment group, but if we wanna rename Washington's airport after Ronald Reagan, you're going to be part of that coalition. And that's, I think, what Trump did extremely effectively. Well, the other thing I would say is you cannot describe the rise of modern conservatism without three people, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Roger Ailes. I mean, the degree to which they unified an entire nationwide movement, educated, in the case of Ailes, built an entire network for it, created a frame of, and again, if you listen to them, they're much more anti-left-wing stupidity than they are doctrinaire conservatives.

But their collective impact, I mean, Rush and Sean in terms of scale of their audience, and Roger in terms of the scale of the institution he built, they were a major counterbalance to the traditional media. No doubt. And only one of those three is still alive, Sean. And those who don't listen to Sean to understand Trump are making a mistake. The reason those guys have an affinity is for the very reason you said, which is they are part of that same understanding of how to communicate that Trump took advantage of. Less doctrinaire conservative, less here are my 82 ideas, and more we need fundamental change because there's too much going on on the left that's being rejected by working class people.

And by the way, in Sean's case, I think he's known Trump for 30 years. Yeah. I mean, as a genuine social friendly, they can talk for an hour, an hour and a half because they're New Yorkers and they understand the rhythm of each other. Yeah. They end almost every sentence with forget about it. We're going to take a little bit of a break, Mr. Speaker. And when we come back, we're going to talk more about Trump's triumph, Speaker Gingrich's 111th book, and about woke culture after this brief break.

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Newt Gingrich has written a new book, Trump's Triumph. And it is not just, as he said, a history of Donald Trump, but also of the movement and what's going on in America now. Who should buy this book, Mr. Speaker? Who's it intended for? Trump fans, historians? Who's it for? I think it's really aimed at any citizen who wants a sense of how do we get here

and where could we possibly go from here? And I think it's the combination of the book. The America's greatest achievement part really launches into the next 50 years. And of course, Trump's triumph was the last unique cycle going back to 2015. So I tried to have both a, you know, before looking back and looking forward in the same book. I said earlier in the program, my thesis that we've never seen an incumbent vice president in the modern era, again, since Reagan, with the advantages that Vice President Vance has, and that puts him on the current trajectory on a path to nomination if he chooses to, that could be almost effortless to win the nomination. I'm wondering what your analysis is of how well positioned he is right now with the president, with the White

House, with activists, donors, etc., if he chooses to run for the nomination? Well, if Trump is a success, remember, I always tell the Trump team that they've won a ticket to the dance, but now they've got to dance. If Trump is a success, I think it's almost inevitable that Vance will become the presidential nominee. I watched the two of them, Clifton and I watched on TV, the two of them at the National Cemetery on Memorial Day. And, you know, realizing that J.D. Vance was one year younger than Richard Nixon was when Eisenhower picked him. So a very young vice president.

He's almost in the Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy range. And he's been very smart. I mean, you know, when they had the announcement a couple of weeks ago, oh, he's going to be the national finance chairman for the Republican National Committee. Well, he'll know every major Republican donor

in the country by sometime early next year. Now, you combine standing next to Trump, the natural news coverage, you know, visiting the last pope, visiting the new pope, making major speeches that really do matter, which he has done. It's very hard for me to see, if he wants it, how he avoids becoming the Republican nominee. And then the question will be, I think the only question for 26 and 28 is really simple. Is it working? Whatever it is. If it's working, we're going to keep the House in 26 and we're going to elect J.D. Vance president in 28. Assuming it stays on this trajectory and it's working well enough, at least for Republicans, can you name either the person or the type of person who would challenge J.D.

Vance for the nomination? Well, look, it's a free country. I mean, there are a lot of governors, there are a lot of senators, there are a lot of billionaires. I mean, you know, you are allowed to come and play. You're just not guaranteed to win. I discovered that in 2012. And I did pretty well until I ran into Romney's Millions and learned that it's a game for big boys. It's not, you know, it's not. But is the opening potentially someone to his right, to his left, and the establishment? I have no idea how, I mean, because he is going to be,

it's beyond MAGA. If we are succeeding, J.D. Vance will be the articulator and the co-manager. I mean, he's done a great job, for example, in the Senate, getting the cabinet through, because he could go back to his senatorial colleagues. He's done a very good job so far representing America overseas. He did a great job on Memorial Day just standing next to the president at Arlington. I mean, you look at that picture and you think to yourself, what's the wedge somebody's going to try to drive? And I don't see how they do it. I mean, everybody's allowed to run and every professional consultant in the country will have some plausible explanation of why you should hire them.

But I mean, from my standpoint as a historian, look, I was for Jack Kemp against George H.W. Bush in 1988. And I learned the power of having stood next to Reagan. Because inside your own party, it may be harder in the general, but inside your own party, it's very hard to beat a vice president. Yeah. And Bush 41 had nothing like the support of President Reagan that Donald Trump's likely to give J.D. Vance. If the RNC said, we want to do deep opposition research and prepare for three Democrats who are most likely to be the Democratic nominee for president, who would you tell them to prepare for? Which three? I haven't got a clue. I mean, because because they all look weak. Well, because because now you're talking about

winning a nomination. Yeah. Look, I mean, at one level, you have to say and I just did Newsom's podcast, so I have to be nice to him. I mean, and he's very, very smart. He's very agile. He's also very shallow, and he has to carry California on his back, and that may be by itself prohibitive. But if you have the largest state in the country and the kind of fundraising that the San Francisco mafia can do, he has to be considered a serious candidate. For the life of me, I don't understand Pritzker. I can't admit it, but he has so much money.

He apparently was pretty effective in New Hampshire. I think the governor, Whitmer, of Michigan is the most attractive of the Democrats just in terms of fitting a series of different boxes. And I think the governor of Pennsylvania is probably the smartest of them. But again, but he's Shapiro. And can a Jewish governor of Pennsylvania

really find love in the Democratic primary? And I'm not sure. Okay. I just want to ask you about one thing respectfully. You've been on Governor Newsom's show. He's been on my show. You said he's shallow. And I know that's a common view,

but I'm wondering what you base it on, because I don't think he is. Well, shallow, shallow may be the wrong. He's agile. Yeah. Agile sounds more positive than shallow to me. I meant in the sense that he's able to constantly move. He wrote a book, which I actually touted, Citizenville, which I think is a very good book. And what puzzles me about Newsom is, to your point where you're right and I didn't say it very well, Newsom has the potential to be very serious, very thoughtful, and very real. He avoids that, partially because it doesn't pay in Sacramento to actually think through how bad Sacramento is. And that's what I meant.

He is a guy who has the potential to go deep. He consciously stays on the surface. Okay. I'm more open to that analysis than Sean. Okay. I think one of the biggest stories of the last four months, and really go back further but more impactful as president, is the degree to which woke culture in all its manifestations is on the retreat. It's almost an unfathomable story. The only thing I can compare it to is at the end of the Cold War, as Eastern European countries started to change so quickly,

and the Berlin Wall came down. If you look at Silicon Valley, so many of the leaders there are now not just neutral, but they're very pro-Trump. Their employees, I thought, would revolt. They have not, or at least not openly. The Washington Post owner announces, we're not going to endorse Kamala Harris. I thought there'd be mass resignations. A lot of people have left the paper, but the paper continues to run. Harvard, although they're at war with the president, clearly on the retreat, so much has

changed in the culture where political correctness is no longer terrorizing people. I'm just wondering if you think what's happened has happened simply because of the firm actions of this administration, or did they basically just tap into something that was already ripe to happen? Well, you may remember the story, the childhood story, about the emperor who had no clothing. Yeah. And all of his advisors had told him that having no clothing was great and that it was exactly what he should do.

And as he's walking down the street, this little boy goes, he's naked. And the emperor looks around and suddenly realizes, yeah, I'm naked. You guys are crazy. I think what happened was there was a, there's a remarkable story to be told someday, which at least goes back to the early 60s.

And I wrote some of it for The Spectator a while back. The American left has roots all the way back to the beginning of the 20th century of despising American bourgeois culture, believing the average person's incompetent. I mean, Woodrow Wilson said publicly that we have to have experts because normal people can't make decisions. And that process of thought has grown and mutated for over a century. It gained, in Lenin's sense, the commanding heights. The universities, the news media, the people from the universities began to infiltrate the corporations. So the 29-year-old assistant to the president is totally left-wing nutso and gets the president to do things stupid like having a transvestite for, you know, for a Bud Light. I mean, you go down and look at

you look at what was going on. But everybody thought that it was unavoidable. It was irritating. We wish it wasn't happening. But what can you do about it? Where Trump is sort of amazing is he knew he intuited that among a huge block of Americans, much bigger than his vote, actually, that people despise this. We do a project called the America's New Majority Project, which people can go to the website. And we've been taking polling since 2018. And you ask questions, for example, should boys be in girls sports? Now, 15% say yes. Should teachers control everything that happens to children with no knowledge of the parent?

15% say yes. You can go down a whole series of these things. And what you have is an AOC who's much more radical culturally than Bernie Sanders. I mean, Sanders is an old-time left-wing socialist. AOC's worldview, which is very central to the Democratic Party, has really become dominant, ultimately has a base so small that they're going to be crushed if they stay there. And what happened was Trump stood up,

starting really in 15 and 16, when his first attacks on illegal immigration horrified people. You may remember the first Fox debate where he got in this brutal knockdown with Megyn Kelly. You flinched. I flinched. Callista flinched watching it on TV. I watched the Franklin's focus group. Everybody in the elite said he lost this debate.

And I began looking at the various websites where people could vote, and he was getting 70% in a field of 16. And by midnight that night, I thought, there is a phenomenon building here that none of us understand. And I think that Trump was tapping the root of people who are sick and tired of being told they have to suffer lies. And so, I mean, just the act, and again, this is radical, the

act of saying there are two sexes, male and female, biologically true, very different than the cultural issue of gender. But just the act of saying that was, of course, verboten. And people have now, and this is where Europeans are in deep trouble, and in Canada, because the structures there, the elites, are desperately clinging to power in order to impose lies on their population. And in every single one of those countries, people are beginning to rebel in terms of populist movements. I know it's a mixed picture, but I'm going to ask you to answer binary. Is the American left adjusting to the reality that they're out of step on so many cultural issues and moving towards change? Or do you think they're more dug in and still have their eyes closed on things like trans athletes and women's sports? You may be the best political

reporter I know. So I'm going to venture out here and then you can explain to me whether I'm close to right. I believe they're heading towards a civil war. I believe that the rational, I mean, in a sense, AOC and Schumer is a perfect model. Schumer is the old time. Yes, I'm a liberal, but let's not be crazy. AOC is, well, if you're not crazy, you can't be a Democrat. You know, and I think that it seems to me in place after place, you're going to have that kind of a fight. All right. I appreciate your kind words. I don't know the answer to the question, so I can't help you. I was hoping you were going to tell me the answer. No, I'm still working on

it. All right. A couple of rapid rounds, because I know you like rapid rounds. First, I'm going to name two Democrats. You pick the one who you think is more likely to be their party's nominee for president in 2028. Binary choice, just one name. Buttigieg or Newsom? Newsom. Whitmer or Emanuel? Emanuel. Shapiro or Newsom? Shapiro. Klobuchar or Ocasio-Cortez? Neither. Ro Khanna or Wes Moore? Moore. I like Moore very much.

Really? Tell me why. He's formidable. Tell me why. He seems to have common sense and he seems to have an ability to talk to people in normal English. I mean, from what I've seen, at least, again, I'm not a student of his, but from what I've seen, he's a very impressive person. Interesting. So it sounds like, from what you said, that you think he may be their frontrunner if he runs. He could be.

I mean, again, if he can put the money together, because you're going to be up against people like Pritzker, and they're going to have the money to drown you. Yeah. I remain deeply skeptical of Governor Pritzker. The Illinois record just seems like not a perfect calling card. Well, he's not a perfect... I look at Pritzker and think, you know, not since President Taft have we had this kind of a candidate. Yeah, I'm not currently in a position to rule out weight as a factor in qualification. So I cut him some slack. All right.

Word association. One or two words max for Trump figures. One or two words max. Here we go. Marco Rubio. Brilliant job. Pete Hegseth. Still learning. Scott Besant. Remarkable. Stephen Miller. Amazingly powerful. These are very good answers, by the way, audience. Susie Wiles. Indispensable. Indispensable.

These are very good answers. Okay. Michael Whatley, chairman of the RNC. Good job. Speaker Johnson. Astonishing job. Impossible. I can't imagine it. Yeah. It's kind of amazing. Okay, Kash Patel. Growing. Okay. Pam Bondi. Excellent choice. Excellent choice. All right, Don Jr.

Amazingly influential. Charlie Kirk. Equally amazingly influential. I'll give you the third one on that. Tucker Carlson. I don't understand it. Tell me about that. I mean, he seems to have a very strong grip on some people,

and I'm underwhelmed. Underwhelmed by his intellect, his policy position? By his influence, by some of his attitudes, some of his views. How do you distinguish between him and Charlie? Oh, I think Charlie's much less on the fringe than Tucker is. And do you have a personal relationship with Tucker? No.

No. No. That surprises me because you know most people like that. We know a lot of people. We all have limits how much time we have. Understood. Okay, a couple more. There's another White House person I want to ask you about. Oh, Kevin Hassett.

Very smart and very helpful. Yeah. Is there one or two people in the government who you think are currently, who you think are unsung heroes who work in the administration? Well, I mean, you have to thank Linda McMahon, who took on a job that turned to be radically harder than I'm sure, I think she thought it would be. Right. Anybody else who you think is kind of a star who doesn't get sufficient attention? No, I don't want to pick out any one person.

Okay. I want to ask you about AI, because you've always been interested in the future and in technology. Do you look at it as more of a danger or more of an opportunity? I look at it as a reality. It's like asking me about electricity in 1880 or the internal combustion engine in 1900. AI is coming. It's going to happen. It's going to be developed. It'll be developed all over the world, whether we do it or not. And we don't fully understand it. In some ways, it could be a threat. In other ways, it could be an enormous advantage.

And I think that's a conversation we'll have for the next half century. How would you describe, I talked at the beginning of the program about asymmetrical advantages, and sometimes a party has one that's so large it can be part of being dispositive in an election. How would you describe the current relationship or the current balance of power between the left and the right regarding the media? And I'm defining the media broadly, CBS News, TikTok, podcasts. Who's got the advantage and how would you describe it? I don't have quantitative data, but my sense is from the polling we do, if you think of culture rather than politics, this country is clearly moving to the right. And it's moving to the right in reaction to its perception of the left.

I mean, I thought in Trump's speech to the Congress, the brief section where he talks about merit, that we ought to hire on merit, we ought to promote on merit, which is a direct assault on the left's core cultural value that you should not reward individualism. That was an important cultural point. When he went to Alabama and listed 10 things he'd learned in his life, they're all very conservative in a cultural sense. So from my perspective, what's happening is, and again, these are all old colleagues of yours, they have two problems. They don't understand, and the big media,

they don't understand that the culture and the technology are all making their world disappear. I mean, it's not even whether you're right or left, it's just irrelevant. And second, it's not even whether you're right or left. It's just irrelevant. And second, they don't realize that we now have this enormous capacity on the Internet for people to find each other and to pay attention to each other. I mean, I have about 2.2 million followers on X,

a smaller number on Truth Social. I have about 2.2 million followers on Facebook, on X. Smaller number on Truth Social. But some days, I'm not quite Trump, but some days I'll post things and I'll get 40,000 likes. Well, I can write a letter to the editor or an article in the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post. I'm not sure I'm going to get 40,000 likes because I'm not sure people are going to pay attention. If I send you a link to this episode, would you post it on X? Sure, of course. Okay. Listen, I love your work. I do everything I can to support you. I think you're a very important contribution to the American system. You're very generous. And I appreciate the kind words and I'm very grateful to you for making time. And I wish you the best of luck trying to peddle this book, because no matter how good a book is, you can't take it for granted. You got to go sell. And I know you're doing that. Trump's Triumph. It's Speaker Gingrich's was like. 43rd or 44th. Trump's triumph. It's available now. And it's it's an important look at an historical figure. Whether you like Donald Trump or not, there's no denying he's an extremely important historical figure. And as the speaker said, if he dances well, having been

invited to the dance by the American people, he will be an extremely important historical figure. Mr. Speaker, thank you. Very grateful to you for making time. All right. That's it for next up. Grateful to you for watching. As always, we'd urge you to share the program. You can like, subscribe, watch us on YouTube, listen to us as a podcast. And every Tuesday and Thursday, we'll have new episodes. So we'll see you. Have a great weekend.

And we'll see you next week on Tuesday to find out more about what's next up.