The Munk Debates Podcast - Newt Gingrich on President Trump’s first term and the future of U.S. politics

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

On this episode of the Munk Debates podcast, former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and best selling author, Newt Gingrich, joins us to discuss the legacy of Trump's first term as president and where U.S. politics might be headed after November 3.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I think it's time for this toxic binary zero-sum madness to stop. We're not an imperial power. We're a revolutionary power. We are no longer in a world where you can plot out moves statesmen to statesmen like a chessboard. You don't know anything about my background to where I came from. It doesn't matter to you because fundamentally I'm a mean white man. We can't do this to the next generation because America will cease to exist. Thanks for listening to the Monk debates. For the next couple of weeks leading up to the U.S. election on November 3rd, we are changing the format for this podcast.

Instead of a debate, we are going to provide you with in-depth interviews with some of the world's smartest thinkers on the big issues driving the U.S. election. From the pandemic to the economy to the polarization of U.S. politics and society. We're calling this mini-series the Monk Dialogs. Like our debates, the focus of each Monk Dialogue is smart and civil conversation, free of spin and focused on the facts. On this installment of the Monk Dialogs, we feature Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of United States House of Representatives and best-selling author

on the legacy of Trump's first term as president and the future of U.S. politics. Here is his dialogue with Monk Debates Chair, Rudyard Griffiths. Hello, I'm Rudyard Griffiths, the host and moderator of the Monk Dialogues. Today we're exceedingly fortunate to have one of America's most astute political observers as our guide to a dialogue on the U.S. election. His name is Newt Gingrich. He's the 50th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. He's a congressman from Georgia serving two decades in the House of Representatives.

he was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and is the author and co-author of over 40 books, including his two most recent titles, Trump at the American Future and Trump v. China, his 2019 bestseller. Newt, terrific to have you here for a monk dialogue. I'm glad to be here, and I've always enjoyed the monk debates, found them to be very stimulating.

So when we had this chance, I thought it would be a great time to explore some ideas and see where it takes us. Excellent. Newt, I want to pull back and kind of engage with you as to what you were at the beginning of your professional career, which was a professor of geography of American history. So let's start there and have you reflect with, you know, 40 plus years of thinking and writing about American identity, culture, politics, and history. What moment in America's past do you think is the analogy that we could try?

try to look to understand where America is today heading into this historic election? Well, I think there are two or three analogous periods. I think Andrew Jackson's rebellion against the Eastern establishment, which was a very contentious fight which changed American politics permanently, the Civil War period. I would say that in our own time, the tension, And from 1967, when there were about 170 cities burning through 1972, the revolutionaries set off 2,500 bombs in the United States, killed a number of people. The Black Panthers led a campaign in which they openly said their goal was to kill policemen. And it was only through very disciplined and determined policing that that whole effort collapsed. But it was a very serious, very real effort in the late 1960s.

This is, I think, more compelling, partly because it's the grandchildren of the people who were active back in the early and mid-60s. And they're more sophisticated, more numerous. They've got vastly more support in terms of corporations and foundations. So the flow of money is dramatically bigger than it would have been in the late 60s. And I think it's a genuine contest about what kind of country will be coming out the other side of this. So I think this is a story that you really don't quite know yet what the ending looks like. When you look at those periods, are you optimistic, you know, compared to the challenge that America confronted in the past and the ability to overcome those challenges? Do you think today's kind of crises of politics and culture is somehow greater than those kind of kind of.

of moments of the testing of the national character of the United States? Well, look, I'm very optimistic that eventually a free people will work this out. And I think there's still enormous resilience in the American culture and the American system. On the other hand, we have not had a competitor comparable to the Chinese communist dictatorship, which is much more formidable than the Soviet Union. And so as we go through a period of internal conflict that absorbs our energy, absorbs our personal bitterness, as you see, for example, between Speaker Pelosi and President Trump, we're doing that in a world where we have a competitor that's very serious, very focused, and I think very dangerous. and that makes us a greater challenge, I think, to work our way through this while still staying

strong enough and focused enough that we don't ultimately succumb to domination by the Chinese. Bitterness is an interesting word, I think an apt one, to kind of capture the political flavor of this moment. Where do you see that bitterness emerging from? What are its sources? Do you see it as kind of structural as related to something inherent to the political system of the country? culture? Do you see it the result of externalities like social media, like, for instance, the perceived threat of China, which is possibly creating a feeling of pressure, a feeling of competition that America hadn't felt for the last number of decades? Well, I think there were two interestingly different parallels that historians will go back someday and take apart and write books about. One is

that the classic white lower middle class, which is sort of the heart of our patriotism, the people who are proudest of the flag, proudest of the national anthem. They felt deeply put upon, particularly by the Obama administration, and the rise of left-wing professors and left-wing reporters and left-wing Hollywood entertainers. So they felt they were under siege. And their response started with the Tea Party rebellion in 2010, and the Democrats lost more seats in that election in the House than they did when I took over in 1990. We picked up 53 seats.

They picked up 63, the Republicans, in 2010. So in the one hand, you had sort of a lower middle class patriotic populism in rebellion against the establishment. On the other hand, I think when Trump won in 16, it was a psychological trauma for the establishment comparable to an IED going off. And I think they've been suffering from the equivalent of PTSD ever since. And every time they start to calm down, Trump will tweet again and it'll drive them crazy. And so they've been in a state of rage for about four solid years. And so each side thinks it has a grievance. Each side feels it very deeply and is very determined ultimately to win and ensure that

its version of reality becomes the future of America. Is this election going to be cathartic to that extent that you have two clear competing visions to camps that have, as you say, very different cultures and orientations and outlooks? Or does this election simply compound those differences, potentially raise the grievances to even a higher pitch, a higher level? I don't think we know yet. If you get a decisive victory by either Trump or Biden, you might have the beginnings of thinking through where we go from here. If you have a really narrow victory by either one, then the losing side will go into a bunker and start preparing for the next round. And I think we don't know which is going to happen. If Trump wins re-election, despite everything that the elite media has done to him for five years, at that point, he will be,

extraordinarily formidable. And if in the process, the Republicans keep retaining the Senate, I suspect that the left will feel that it is mortally threatened. On the other hand, if Biden wins and in that process picks up the House and Senate, I suspect that the conservative wing of America will be terrified that they will try to turn the whole country into California and create a one-party system in which there's no effective competition. So I think both sides are a long way from being exhausted enough for this struggle to end. Fascinating stuff. When you look at the contracting with America,

which was one of the big legislative accomplishments of the post-war period in America, you were its author, its originator, and you look back at the kind of values that you instilled the policies and principles in that document. How do you feel about American governance and policy today? It seems in many ways new to have strayed, in some fundamental aspects from, you know, some of the core tenets of that contract with America

that was so politically successful in its time? Yeah, look, first of all, I think it's very hard to sustain a coherent reform movement. We stood on Ronald Reagan's shoulders. I campaigned with Reagan in the 70s as a congressman. I worked with him in the 80s. If you go back and look at the contract with America, it's virtually all Reaganism. So we'd had a long period of developing those ideas. What we were unable to do was invent a second act.

And I just admit that. I mean, we had balanced the federal budget for four straight years, reformed welfare, cut taxes. We'd had a pretty significant impact. But we had not changed the underlying culture of the party. I used to reflect that both Thatcher and Reagan had failed to change their parties. Reagan had defeated Soviet Union. Thatcher had defeated the coal miners union and the socialist left, but neither of them could fundamentally change the culture of their parties.

And so you ended up with a Republican Party, which I think turned out to be incapable of being a reform party, which is why by 2016 or late 15, about 63% of Republicans did not like their Washington leadership, which is what created the vacuum that Donald Trump entered. At the same time, you had a serious effort under Obama. which you can dislike or like, but it was certainly a serious effort. And its major problem was it couldn't solve the problem. You couldn't get economic growth. The very things they were doing minimized the likelihood that they could build a coalition.

And so they so alienated the country that they lost a disastrous election in 2010, only two years after being in office. And then they were permanently, I think, caught up in a tug of war. The result's been, in my judgment, we're at least 20 years behind in serious profound reform, and it debilitates the entire system and is a grave threat to our capacity to compete and succeed in the world.

As you say, there are so many issues that require American competitiveness, economically, geopolitically, in the context of the rise of China, something I know you feel strongly about the threat that that represents. yet it seems that America has turned inwards. It's turned inwards in terms of its culture, moral obligation to the spread of democracy and the ideals of freedom abroad.

It's hard to be kind of pessimistic about America's ability to challenge China when its own house is so divided. I think that's right. I think you put your finger on a real problem. Now, historically, democracies are very turbulent. chaotic systems. So the great virtue of dictatorship is that it looks efficient until it collapses. The great challenge of a true democracy or free society is that it's permanently chaotic, generates new entrepreneurs, new energy, as old companies die, new companies emerge.

So there's a random chaoticness which would drive Xi Jinping crazy if you ever tried to govern in this kind of environment. The question is whether this fervent, term, oil itself becomes a fertile ground in which we gradually rediscover ourselves or whether, in fact, this inhibits us to such a degree that we no longer are competitive. And I think there are profound reasons to be worried that the Chinese have a model which I detest, but which is very powerful. They basically offer you stability and food in return for subservience and the toleration of dictatorship. And there's pretty good evidence that that's a model of fair number of people will accept.

So we do face real questions about our capacity to get our act together and to be genuinely competitive. And part of the reason I stay active is I'm not at all convinced right now that we're going to succeed. And so I try to do what I can through writing and speaking and what have you to get people to think seriously and deeply about how big. the reforms have to be if we're truly going to compete with China. Before we go to audience questions, I think it would be interesting for our audience listening

now to hear your case for why you think the re-election of Donald Trump stands America in the best chance of moving forward, I presume, on these big reforms that you think are essential for American prosperity at home, but also this challenge, this possibly existential challenge that China represents. What's your case? Because I think some people, Canadian viewers, would think somehow it's counterintuitive. You seem to be somebody who's very sensible, very grounded in the real politic of the moment, yet you're also a strong supporter of a president who is perceived to have divided, who is perceived to have distracted Americans from their international objectives and policies of the past. Yeah, I'm not, you know, I'm sure that that's very accurate. In fact, I think, one of the reasons you have never Trumpers is you have a whole generation of national security

people who Trump has repudiated. And so they're understandably bitter because he's in essence made their life's work irrelevant. But it's not an unsophisticated approach. For example, the very first trip Trump took overseas was to Riyadh, where the king of Saudi Arabia, who detested Obama, thought he was weak and thought that he would not protect the Arab world from Iran. The king met Trump, but more importantly, the king had brought together 54 Muslim countries, the largest gathering of Muslim countries ever to meet with an American president. And Trump spent three full days meeting with him. Now, as a result of that, they reached an understanding. So when he moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, which I co-authored the bill to do in 1995,

and watched every president back down in the face of State Department pressure. When he did move the embassy, there was no great violence. There was no great reaction. And in most of the Arab countries, they couldn't care less. So he then, having proven they had the guts to do it, went back to those countries. And for the first time in a quarter century, he got two countries, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, to agree to have relationship with Israel. That strikes me as pretty effective international behavior.

more effective than any president in the last quarter century. But of course, you'll get no credit for it. You look at NATO. Trump went to NATO and said something, which, by the way, George W. Bush and Barack Obama had said, which is, you guys aren't doing your fair share. But both Bush and Obama said it quietly, softly, pleadingly, Trump went in and kicked over the table. He said to Merkel, how can you be the biggest economy in Europe and not protect yourself? And furthermore, have a new gas pipeline.

So your dependence on the Russians is going to be so massive. Why do you want me to protect you if you don't want to protect yourself? Well, of course, they didn't like that. They love being pandered to by Obama because he told him to do whatever they wanted to do and they'd love him anyway. And that's not who Trump is. On the other hand, as the Secretary General NATO has pointed out, they've increased NATO spending by $400 billion because of Trump's intervention.

So I think because he's different, it doesn't mean he's wrong. And it certainly doesn't mean he's wrong. an isolationist. He has a very sophisticated sense that his job is to be the American president, not the global president. So just a very big difference in views. Absolutely. And, you know, I think that is a fascinating case that you can look at Trump's foreign policy record. And in that, you can see some real substantial successes that I agree with you that are often overlooked. But just before we go to questions, though, I think it'd be fascinating for viewers to hear the case for Trump as a domestic president, because I think the intuitive

sense is that it has been a chaotic presidency, the tweets, the attacks, and that has distracted America from, as you and others have rightly described, these very difficult, challenging debates and discussions and ultimately policy that needs to emerge to create a reform agenda that can position America for economic and geopolitical competition in the 21st century. Well, Trump managed to get passed an enormous tax cut. He managed to implement the law. largest deregulation program in American history. He managed to move the courts towards a constitutional originalist model on a scale none of us would have thought possible. He has used the Department of Education to start moving against left-wing propaganda and to start moving towards

more school choice so that there's competition in the education arena. You can go down a whole list of things. The fact is, if you're faced with the level of hostility, in the New York Times and the Washington Post, and NBC, etc., that he's faced with, you're not going to know what he's doing. So they join him in a cheerful chase of his tweets. And I think he's comfortable with that because underneath all the noise,

he's gradually, steadily implementing things he believes in. And I think if he gets four more years, he will continue to reform the country. But he's actually implemented vastly more reforms than any of the elite media want to cover. We're going to go to questions just in a matter of moments. But before we do, I think it would be interesting for the audience, just to have not a prediction as to who's likely to win unless you feel like sharing that,

but more a sense of how to look at the next two weeks to understand what could happen. Because you've got so much experience from your time in Congress, a speaker, you've been kind of living and breathing American politics for decades now. I think it would be fascinating for us to get a sense of what are you watching? to try to understand which way this vote will go on November 3rd? Well, most of the people who I trust and who tended to be accurate in 2016 think that Trump is on the verge of winning and maybe on the verge of winning decisively because they think that the elite polls are so totally wrong

and are basically rigged as propaganda devices to demoralize the right. But they don't know how to ask people the right questions and they don't know how to find the right people. But I think the Biden corruption, if it actually breaks through, we'll end the election and ended it with a shocking margin because the scale of the 87-page Senate report, which the elite media has tried to hide, the scale of the computer, which has now been found, the number of people starting to come out as witnesses. We've had at least two in the last 24 hours who were business partners of Hunter Biden, who said, that Joe Biden was directly involved. And these are eyewitnesses. If this breaks through despite every effort of the Twitter and Facebook and the national media

to hide it, then I think you'll see the Biden campaign just literally fall apart. I don't see any circumstance where Trump falls apart. I can imagine him losing narrowly. But his base is so solid. And they've endured so many years of being lied to that they just, I think they just shrug it often. Nothing in the New York Times of the Washington Post or NBC says affects Trump's base at all. And just finally, if we do not see a conclusive result on election night, and by that, I mean one or either of these candidates winning a set of states that really suggests that they have a lock on

that electoral college, do you anticipate a difficult contested election phase and how concerned are you about how that is going to play out both on the ground in terms of the respective supporters of these two parties increasingly radicalized, but also, you know, in Congress and in the courts. What's your prediction if we are in that contested post-election phase? First of all, the election is going to take at least a week to 10 days. The Supreme Court decision, which was, I think, insane to extend the Pennsylvania ballots until I think it's six or nine days after the election, guarantees that they'll be counting ballots in Pennsylvania

probably for two weeks after the election. So you're guaranteed 20 or 30 or 40 times more chaos than you had in 2000 with the hanging chads in Palm Beach. And I would not be at all surprised to see it take us until, though, the middle of November to begin to know who won, unless one of them wins by a big decisive margin. It is going to be challenging. I think it has implications.

Frankly, if Trump wins decisively, Antifa and Black Lives Matter, and a whole range of other groups will go to the streets because they will repudiate the election outcome. If Biden wins, the right is not as likely to go to the street, but the level of opposition to him will go up very dramatically. Wow. Well, we'll have to watch those outcomes. Newt, we're now going to take audience questions.

The first is from Celeste Powell. She's asking, do you believe that bipartisan leadership, including in the Republican-controlled Senate, is still possible? Are American political leaders capable of pursuing collaboration and compromise for the public good? What's your take on that, Newden? And I guess it goes to part of what we've been talking about, which is the kind of state and future of American political.

culture, is that kind of bipartisan aspiration, really something that was part of an elite kind of view of how American politics should work? Maybe in your view it's a good thing that it's gone away. Look, I think that principled bipartisanship is a good thing. And certainly we could not have gotten welfare reform or food and drug administration reform or federal communications commission reform, any of those signed into law without Bill Clinton's signature. you had to have bipartisan cooperation. If you look at the Senate, people like Lamar Alexander, who sadly is retiring, but who was extraordinarily effective at bipartisanship. If you watched the Senate's hearings with Amy Coney-Barrant. At the end of it, Diane Feinstein, the Democrat,

actually hugged Lindsay Graham and said it was one of the best run hearings she'd ever been to, for which, by the way, she's now being pressured into stepping down. as the ranking member of the committee because her left was so angry about it. But she was perfectly happy being bipartisan. And I suspect since he's in a tough race back home, Lindsay was thrilled that she hugged him in public. So I think it all depends on the circumstance and the time. Pelosi certainly has followed a strategy of basically scorched her hostility.

I mean, look, I was Speaker of the House for four years while President Clinton came in and gave a state of the union. It would never have occurred to me to tear up his speech. I mean, what she did was an act of such hostility and contempt that it's pretty hard to see how those two ever work together. So the president cleverly sent up Mnuchin, who is not in her line of fire, and she and Minnuchin have had hours and hours and hours of conversation. Probably helps that Mnuchin is basically a liberal Democrat, so he can get along with her easier, I think, than say Mark Meadows could, who's a conservative Republican. I think you'll find that Mitch McConnell's perfectly happy to be bipartisan. He just wants to get his way. And if being pleasant gets him his way, he'll be pleasant.

If being unpleasant gets him his way, he'll be unpleasant. And he's perfectly happy if the other guy to win something, because that's the nature of the Senate. But I think it's a challenge, Schumer, for example, who could end up in a primary in two years against AOC, really has to worry about his left because if they think he's a sowout or they think he's gotten too old, he could lose to her in a New York State primary. So there are natural limitations caused by the nature of your coalitions that aren't personality driven. They're more driven by other kinds of realities. Great insights. Let's go to our next question for you. What do you believe will happen both in the short term and the long term in stock markets in the event of a Trump loss?

You know, markets really have had a remarkable four years under this president, Newt Gingrich. As you said, the tax cuts were a powerful injection of some might characterize agreed. Others would say stimulus into markets, but what's your concerns here? You would obviously have them vis-a-vis a Biden victory. And let's go broader than just stock markets. Have you talked about the American economy in 2021? one? Well, I think it depends on how suicidal you think Biden and Harris are. They've said a whole series of things to get elected, which they might or might not try to actually do. But if they were, for

example, to come out and aggressively be opposed to fracking and aggressively be opposed to all fossil fuels, the impact both in direct economy and the impact in fuel prices would be very substantial. And that would then have an effect certainly on the value, not just the fuel companies, but for example, the chemical industry, which really relies on inexpensive natural gas. If Biden actually pushed for the size of the tax increase that he's campaigning on, I think you'd find people taking money out of the market pretty rapidly. And you have to remember that back when we had very high nominal tax rates up to, I think when Reagan came in, it was 71. percent. Most rich people didn't pay it. They paid lawyers and accountants to avoid it. So their

effective rate wasn't dramatically higher than it is now, but they had to pay more and they were limited more in how they could put their money in order to maximize protecting it from the tax collector. So I think it depends. I worry in general, and I say this as the only speaker of the House in our lifetime to have balanced the federal budget for three years. I worry about the volume of liquidity in the system worldwide. I worry about how, even with Trump, I would worry about how we're going to manage a transition towards a healthier and more natural economy and away from a Federal Reserve Bank driven massively, I think, over leveraged and overinflated monetary system. So I do think that it's prudent to be careful. But if the Fed is prepared to

continue to pump cash in, don't get rid of stock yet because it'll go up for another two or three or four years. But sooner or later, as they try to draw back, they're going to find every time they try to blow back, it has a multiplier effect in the market that will make them very timid. Thank you for listening to the Monk Debates podcast. If you enjoy the civil and substantive conversations we convene week in and week out on this podcast, please consider. becoming a Monk Debates member. As a member, you get unlimited access to our 10 years plus video and audio online library

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Visit monkdebates.com slash membership for more details. Now, back to our Monk Dialogue with the former Speaker of U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich. Let's go to another question. This is from William. He's asking, you've argued that Donald Trump is a person who can best counter an anti-democratic China. can you explain why Trump would leave the Trans-Pacific Trade Deal partnership that excluded China and go on to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico, the EU, Japan, and South Korea, our so-called allies. So I guess to unpack that question for you, Speaker Gingrich, I mean, as Canadians often,

we are somewhat shocked by a change in what we thought was one of the closest bilateral relationships in the world, and that we too have real concerns over China. We're certainly experiencing a lot of pressure from the Chinese government on a variety of fronts, yet it doesn't seem that America is the same ally that it was to us in the past. Is that a misreading of the current geopolitical play that the Trump administration has been engaged in or not? Well, I think there are three different things in that question. First of all, the president also imposed tariffs on China. And I think he opposed bigger tariffs on China and has indicated he's going to do even more.

So in that sense, it wasn't like he didn't have the same attitude towards China. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, I think, was widely regarded as badly negotiated. One of the things which I don't expect anyone to be happy about, but it's a fact. If you are the largest economy in the world, and certainly in terms of imports and real goods and services, we're still an enormous market, you are disadvantaged in multilateral negotiations. because all the other countries can collectively gang up on you, whereas you have substantial advantage in bilateral negotiations because no other country has the weight to compete with you.

And so I think there was a sense that we had not gotten a very good deal. And I think even Hillary Clinton was very dubious about the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The other thing was that Trump came into office, had said for 20 years, that he thought that our trade negotiators were terrible. set it publicly during the campaign. And so I think he looks at every single trade deal on the planet as basically a bad deal for the United States. And he wants to push and shove and see if he can get better deals and create more jobs

in America. He's not a free trader. He is probably what you can call a fair trader, that he's not for isolationism. He's not for trying to cut the U.S. off from the rest of the planet. But he is deeply, passionately committed to the United States getting the best possible deal. and that's going to step on a lot of toes. Okay, straight up answer from Speaker Newt Gingrich. Let's go to our next question coming in from Dennis.

He says, what responsibility do you take as the architect of the contract with America for the preceded polarization of American politics today? Newt, I think what Dennis is getting there, and I'm sure you're used to this question you've had at many times is there's a perception that something changed in America's political culture at the time that you were leading the U.S. House of Representatives and that that polarization that birthed the contract that birthed a lot of the political success of the movement that you led went on to manifest itself with a Tea Party in the Trump Republican Party and that you're the author of all this, the progenitor of all this. Do you accept?

that label? Do you embrace it? Is it a misreading of history? Give us your take. Well, I think it goes back to Barry Goldwater in 62 to 64, then was picked up by Ronald Reagan. And then I guess it's fair to say, I picked it up from Reagan, and Trump picked it up from me. And the difference is very simple. The old establishment, the Democrats who dominated, they dominated Georgetown social parties, They dominated the news media. They dominated the Congress. They dominated the appointed bureaucracies. They were perfectly happy to have Republicans who played at competing.

And they gave them crumbs off the table and they had a dance they did together. But the Republicans had no hope of winning and the Democrats knew it. And the Democrats were perfectly happy to take care of their friends, the Republicans, who were harmless. Goldwater came along and basically took on. the entire modern welfare establishment and said it was wrong. He lost disastrously, but he captured probably over half the Republican Party. Reagan came along and said, look, there's a profound, fundamental different direction, which I want to go in, which ultimately ended up defeating the Soviet Empire, among other things. And for eight years, we were moving in a direction that people

tend to forget often involve real hostility. I mean, Tip O'Neill, the Democratic Speaker at one point said Ronald Reagan had ice water in his veins. And so it wasn't always happy and pleasant. When I came along, I had the temerity after 40 years of being in the wilderness to think it would be good to have a Republican majority. Well, the Democrats hated that. I mean, the first two weeks we were back in office in 95 as a majority, we had to keep telling the Democratic chairman that they were now ranking members and therefore they had to sit in the ranking member chair, they couldn't sit in the chairman's chair. None of them had ever sat in the ranking member's chair. And they knew they hadn't done anything wrong, so it must have been Gingrich.

And their allies in Washington all decided it was Gingrich. Not that they'd been in power for 40 years, that they were worn out, that they had no new ideas. And I was very proud of the fact that we kept the house for 12 years. And then after a four-year break, we took it back again in 2010. But if you're going to be an insurgency taking on a national establishment, if you're serious, it's going to lead to real tension, and the national establishment is going to condemn you because you're not playing your role. Your role is to be the Patsy. You're supposed to roll over and get beaten. Or you're allowed to win as long as you don't take it seriously, which is why you had, for example, a very weak people being appointed as Supreme Court by some Republican presidents. and you've had very strong people appointed by Reagan and appointed by Donald Trump.

And I think that's an example of the difference. Okay. Some interesting analysis there. Thank you, Newt. Let's go to our next question from Peter Zuck. We're saying, asking you, we rarely hear about federal deficits anymore. Over the last few years, the amount we collectively owe, I guess Peter is emailing from the United States, has grown astronomically with no end in sight.

How is this likely to play out in the next five years plus? Well, I think in the short run, there's no debt crisis. We resemble the Great Britain of Pitt the Younger, which was capable of generating so much money that it could defeat Napoleon because he just couldn't compete with them financially. So they could afford to subsidize armies all across Europe and they could afford to do things the French couldn't do. We're very similar to that. We have an enormous amount of wealth. We are innovating all the time. We are creating new things such as rockets that can be reused.

We're developing breakthroughs in health care that are going to affect the entire planet and produce huge amounts of wealth as a consequence. So in that sense, we can carry a fair amount. I think one of three things will happen. Somebody will come along, panic, and decide they have to raise taxes. And if you raise taxes enough, you'll, crush the economy and actually at that point the deficit will get worse. Somebody will come along and decide that you could actually do what we did in the 90s and have a very methodical plan,

take seven to 10 years and get to a balanced budget and begin to really shrink the debt as a percent of the economy. Or the Fed could decide just to inflate its way out. If you have enough inflation, you devalue the debt to such a degree that disappears as a percent of your gross domestic product. So those are the three basic strategies. I personally prefer a very methodical pro-growth, pro-reform control spending, and we did that in the 90s, and it worked really very dramatically. It took us four years to balance the federal budget. Nobody thought it was possible. We didn't think it was possible. We thought it would take seven years. It happened in four. Let's squeeze in one more question here, New. You've been exceedingly generous with your time.

It's from Carl Youngman. He's asking, what ever happened to Simpson Bowles report on depths and deficits in the six main issues it recommended that needed to be addressed urgently? Just to remind you, Simpson Bowles, was that bipartisan committee that kind of was tasked with a lot of what we've been talking about, which is kind of looking at America's long-term obligations around social security, health care, how these unfunded liabilities were going to be met. but do you still think that there's a consensus out there to actually deal with these debts and deficit issues? Because right now it doesn't seem to be very popular on the right or on the left. No, look, I think until you get done surviving the pandemic and it eventually goes away as the Spanish flu did, and until you can get back to business as usual, you're not going to be able to have a

conversation about balancing the budget. It's not possible. And I think it would be a diversion from what you have to do, as you pointed out, what you have to do is keep the economy growing, minimize the number of small businesses that die because they're hard to replace into the base of all employment growth, and prepare for a very dynamic future. So if we come out of this and, for example, in the next term, whether it's Biden or Trump, if they were to follow a very aggressive infrastructure plan to really modernize and make our infrastructure competitive with China or Singapore or et cetera, those kind of things could lead to the kind of economic growth, which would then make it possible to start looking at how to balance the budget. But to try to do that right now,

I think, would be a big misallocation of intellectual energy and leadership. Newt, I want to really thank you for this last hour that we've been able to spend together. You've captured the spirit of these dialogues, which is a reflection on the moment we're in and a reflection that is civil, that is substantive, that engages with the big issues and debates of our time. You've brought your usual persipacity and sober, calm thoughts. So thank you so much. We look forward to getting you back up to Canada here for another monk debate before too long.

Look forward to it. Thank you. Thanks for listening to The Monk Dialogues with Newt, We hope you enjoyed the opportunity to listen to smart, civil conversation on the legacy of Trump's first term as president and the future of U.S. politics. For more information on the Monk Dialogs, visit our website at monkdebates.com slash dialogues. We appreciate your feedback on this podcast. Please give us a rating and write a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you download your audio. Thank you.

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