- I think it's been remarkable
to have this level of panic.
You know, Governor Newsom,
for example, closed
the zoos again.
Now, if you're gonna lock up
every poor child in Los Angeles
or San Diego or San Francisco,
so that they're in a little
apartment, they have no space.
And then you're gonna
close all the public parks.
What are these little
kids supposed to do?
And it strikes me
that what you end up with is
a public health dictatorship,
which is very singular in
how it measures things.
I had a university president
say to me the other day
that he will lose more
young people to suicide
and drunk driving than
he will lose to COVID.
And he said,
"They're reopening."
He cannot understand
why people have any doubt
at all about reopening.
(upbeat music)
- I'm Dave Rubin and this
is "The Rubin Report"
reminder everybody to subscribe
to our YouTube channel
and click that pesky
notification bell.
And joining me today is the
former Speaker of the House,
the author of over 40 books
and the chairman of
Gingrich 360 Consulting,
Newt Gingrich, welcome
to The Rubin Report.
- Well, it's good
to be with you.
So exciting.
- I'm glad to have you.
You are in Rome at the moment.
What's going on in
Rome these days.
- Well, as you know,
my wife Callista is the
Ambassador to the Vatican,
so that's why we're here.
Rome actually has
had a huge comeback.
They got in a big trouble
back in February because
there are about 100,000 Chinese
workers in Northern Italy,
and they were allowing
the flights to continue.
So they were literally
flying in from Wuhan
bringing the disease right here.
And it got so out of control
that their hospital system
was breaking down and they
were starting to triage people.
And if you were over
80, they basically said,
"You're not getting, we're
not gonna take care of you."
He in fact, Callista
helped Samaritan's Purse
Franklin Graham's operation.
They flew in an entire hospital,
68 beds, 60 doctors and nurses
into the worst hit
part of Northern Italy.
So the Italian Government
closed everything down.
We had grocery stores,
pharmacies, gas stations.
That's it.
If you were in the street,
you had to have a good
excuse in writing,
or you could be fined $3,200.
So for 10 weeks,
Callista ran the embassy
from our house virtually,
and we do amazing amount
of Zoom and go to meeting.
And what have you,
and for 10 weeks,
they basically starved the virus
and gradually got
it under control.
It's now sufficiently
under control
that they've reopened the
restaurants, the museums,
public parks, stores,
and you see people
walking around now,
problem readily is about
14% of their economy.
$137 is tourism, and they
don't have any tourism yet.
So places like the Colosseum,
the last year got
23,000 people a day.
You know, they maybe
have 500 or 1,000 a day.
That's a real economic
crisis for them.
But in terms of the pandemic,
they are in dramatically,
dramatically better shape today.
- Yeah.
So we're holding this
interview for a couple days.
So I don't wanna ask you
anything about specifically
what's happening today,
but generally speaking
the way you see the
lockdown now in America,
and I'm here in Los Angeles
and literally just yesterday,
Newsom put us in
another lockdown
and that these things seem to
keep continually happening.
We're watching some spikes,
it just seems that no one knows
who to trust at the moment.
What's your take about how
the states have done it,
where Trump fits into this.
And is there something that you,
would have been
doing differently as
Speaker of the House
to push your guys, to push
certain things differently?
- Well, I think
it's been remarkable
to have this level of panic.
You know, Governor Newsom,
for example, closed
the zoo's again.
Now, if you're gonna lock up
every poor child in Los Angeles
or San Diego or San Francisco,
so that they're in a little
apartment, they have no space.
And then you're gonna
close all the public parks.
What are these little
kids supposed to do?
And it strikes me that
what you end up with
is a public health dictatorship,
which is very singular in
how it measures things.
I had a university president
say to me the other day
that he will lose more
young people to suicide
and drunk driving than
he will lose to COVID.
And he said,
"They're reopening."
He cannot understand
why people have any doubt
at all about reopening.
And so I would start from there.
The people you need to worry
about, half of all the deaths,
are people who are over 70
years of age and in particular,
he go the more you go up at
80 years of more dangerous
at 90 it's even more dangerous.
So you know that you wanna
really work to protect
people who are over 70.
But you don't need to really
work to protect people
who are 13.
And the idea that we're,
we've gone from a
country that used to know
how to open one house,
school rooms and have
seven classes in one room
and people actually
learn how to read
to an extraordinarily expensive
union dominated bureaucracy
that doesn't wanna teach.
And you're gonna have
this in Los Angeles,
they've got it in New York.
I mean, they have in
Fairfax County, Virginia,
one of the biggest and
richest school districts
in the country, why would
we pay people to not teach?
Why would we have all
these big fancy buildings
nobody can go to?
And I think it really raises
very profound questions
about the whole system.
- Yeah, well that
actually is perfect segue
because I was gonna say,
as someone that's a true
lover of American history
and has written about it,
and you talk about American
history all the time,
are you sort of shocked the
way the average American person
just sort of takes orders and
doesn't necessarily ask why
are these things happening?
You know, at one time it
was flatten the curve.
We don't hear the phrase
flatten the curve anymore.
We haven't heard it.
(clears throat)
Excuse me for about six weeks.
Now it seems to
be something else
or they just give us an order
and they don't
really tell you why.
- Well I mean, part of it has
been, I think the evolution
from a news media to
a propaganda media,
so that you have these
waves of coverage.
I compared it to
watching the flagellate
in the middle ages,
this was a group.
They would go from city to
city beating themselves.
And so you have all of these
people out here who they panic.
The truth is if you
look at the death rate,
there's no reason to panic.
This is not the bubonic
plague, it's not Ebola.
Most people who get,
first of all an amazing
percentage who get
the Chinese virus,
which is what it is.
Most of them don't
even know they have it.
When you're told
somebody tested positive,
who was quote symptomatic.
That means whatever symptoms
they had were so mild
that it didn't affect them.
So you have to then stop
and say, "Wait a second,
"why are we panicking over..."
You know, the numbers go up,
with the numbers go up
with people under 35
who are totally healthy.
And I think,
I have been truly appalled
my younger daughter
Jackie Cushman,
as a certified financial analyst
and used to run a
very large budget,
billion dollar plus budget.
And she said to
me the other night
and just she and I discussed,
she said, "I have
never seen statistics
"put together so badly
"that it is impossible to know
what's actually happened."
And she is just literally
fed up with this things,
whether it's because the
government statistics
are so incompetent or whether
it's because the news media
is deliberately,
they're going from worst case
to worst case to worst case.
So they don't tell
you that, for example,
Georgia has about 10% of the
fatality rate of New York.
They praise Cuomo, who is the
worst governor in the country,
but has been praised so
much by the news media
that he now has a very high
popularity rating in New York
while he killed people.
I mean, at least six to
8,000 senior citizens died
because of Governor Cuomo
and decisions he made.
But it somehow gets
brushed over because
he's liberal and
therefore it's okay.
- Yeah, so let's sit with
that for a little bit,
because, I think a lot of
people think that Trump
was sort of the first guy, the
first mainstream politician
in a modern sense to
really go after the media.
But I remember your campaign
in 2012 really well,
and you were capturing
that populous sentiment.
And during the debates,
you won a couple
of debates in a row
and you had the crowds cheering
and screaming to the point that,
the networks were asking crowds,
not to make sounds
during the debates,
which in many ways,
deflated your candidacy
because you were
using their energy.
That's sort of relevant
to what you just said
there about Cuomo,
because Democrats seem
to be able to get away
with virtually anything
and then blaming it
on the other guy,
because they know the
media runs cover for them.
You guys don't get that luxury.
(Newt laughs)
- Well, look,
I mean, you could tell that
the Romney was the media choice
because they rigged
towards the end.
They just rigged the debates.
I mean, it was amazing when I
got up on stage and they said,
"Nobody gets to applaud.
"Nobody has to do this.
"Nobody has to do that."
And I looked at it and he
was truly anti-popular.
I mean, it was as elitist
as you could possibly be.
And I frankly watched--
- When you say they,
do you mean that's
coming from the networks
or coming from the RNC?
- No, no, coming
from the network.
- From the network, okay.
- The network had said decided
that Romney was the low risk,
moderate candidate that
they could survive with.
And that I really was their
mortal enemy, which is true.
I mean, if you're gonna
destroy the New York Times
and turn it into a
propaganda machine,
then as somebody who grew up
when there really
was a news media,
I am deeply opposed to it
and I don't mind going
head-to-head with
all these people.
I really admire
Trump in that sense,
because I thought in 15 and 16,
he did the best
job I've ever seen.
I mean better than Reagan,
better than me at taking
on the media and winning.
I mean, it's just straight
knock down, drag out fight.
And that he's had
to do that because,
they are a propaganda system,
they're not a news media.
They are about
93% against Trump.
They lie about him,
when he gave this terrific
speech at Mount Rushmore,
which was a great redefinition
of American exceptionalism
and why we matter.
When they couldn't find
anything in the speech,
they just lied about it.
It was the most amazing thing,
in fact, Michael Barone is a
very common sense practical guy
wrote a column saying
this is the most dishonest
news media of his lifetime
and that he thinks it will come
back to haunt the news media
for having betrayed the
trust of the American people.
- Are you worried that as
those institutions crumble,
we're gonna lose some
sort of national cohesion.
This has come up with
almost all of my guests
because everyone at this point
basically agrees that
the media is crumbling.
They've done this to themselves.
They seem to double down
every time instead of,
having a moment of
self-reflection.
But are you worried that if
the New York Times fails,
if CNN, if just the media
and then the rest
of the institutions,
'cause that then spreads to
academia and everywhere else
that if these
institutions all crumble,
we almost have no way
of having a national
ethos at some level.
- Well, I think there are
other institutions that emerge.
I think there's an amazing
amount of information now
on the internet through
Facebook and YouTube and a
(mumbles)
Twitter, all the Twitters.
There's a lot of hostility
in it, but you know,
and then you have
places like C-SPAN
which really are a
remarkably neutral.
In fact, I have watched several
Trump's speeches on C-SPAN.
You also have an ability
to stream things.
The President streams
a lot of his speeches
and Callista and I
watch his speeches
as he stream from
the White House.
We also frankly,
during the lockdown,
got into watching
both the St Peter's
and the Basilica in Washington,
because they were
streaming mass.
So you're entering a world
of dramatically more media,
not less me just as your show,
is another example of more
media, not less media,
but we're gonna have
a really deep split
because we're in the middle
of a cultural civil war.
And there's just no
question in my mind
that this is the most
divided we've been
since the election
of Lincoln in 1860
and his reelection in 1864.
And that part of
the reason I wrote
"Trump and the American
Future" is that,
I really do believe that
what happens this fall
may do more to shape
America's future
than any election since 1864.
And I say that because
I think that the Biden,
Polosi, Schumer team
will be so radical that we
would not recognize the country
within two or three years,
they would have moved
it so far to the left.
- Do you think that it's the
Biden, Schumer, Pelosi team
that are actually
the true radicals?
Or do you think
it's the Bernie crew
and the AOC crew beneath them
that's sort of just
shifting them that way?
Or do you really feel like
they are actually that radical?
It's a little hard
to tell these days
if they're a little
more old school
and the tail is wagging
the dog, basically.
- Yeah.
I mean a little bit like saying
when you got run
over by the truck,
do you think the driver was
deliberately trying to rob you
(mumbles)
you got run over.
When Schumer the other day
came out for the 10%
cut in defense spending,
which Sanders is
offering an amendment.
And when Pelosi
brought up a bill,
which 207 Democrats voted for,
that gives a $1,200 bonus
to every illegal immigrant.
I want you to think about this,
207 Democrats voted to
give a $1,200 bonus check
to every illegal immigrant.
I mean, you have to wonder that
these people are just crazy.
Biden has said that he
would sign the Pelosi bill,
which was a $3 trillion,
very radical bill.
You certainly didn't see
Biden criticizing the looters
and the violence.
In fact,
13 of Biden's staff actually
helped bail out looters
and violent people
in Minneapolis.
So I just,
I think there's a pattern in
"Trump and the American future"
I put in a chapter that the
Democrats love criminals
and hate beliefs.
And I think if you look at
Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago,
New York, I think that that's
the objective evidence.
- So as we watch these
progressive cities crumble,
the several you
just named there,
and we can go on the list,
all the cities with
the worst violence
and the worst gun violence and
the highest rates of murders
they're all, I think, 19 out
of 20 or something like that
are progressive run cities.
Do you sense that
what those mayors
and the governors to
another extent want,
is they want the chaos so that
Trump has to bring in troops
or the National Guard,
like they're almost laying out
a trap so that he looks like
the authoritarian that
they wish him to be?
- No, I think,
I mean, I don't think
they mind that happening,
but I don't think that's
what they're doing.
I think that the left
really has this fantasy
image of how the world works.
And they really think that if
only there were no policemen.
And so it's like the
Democratic Mayor of Seattle
who said that we were gonna
to have a summer of love
when they created the
autonomous district.
Now, four people got killed
and she gave up on that.
Although ironically, she
didn't really give up on it
until the demonstrators
came to her home one night.
And then--
- Certainly when they were
surrounding her house.
Yeah.
- That's something that's true.
But I think part of it is
that their radical
left wing ideology
doesn't allow them
to deal with reality.
So you end up with the,
"Let's cut the budget of the
New York police department
"a billion dollars" when there
were I think, 13 people shot.
Yeah on Monday.
Chicago has few too few
policemen, not too many.
And they have a dozen or more
people shot every weekend.
You know, after all the
problems in Minneapolis
they're now moving to dissolve
the police department.
And in my mind,
if you stop and say, "Wait,
walk me through this."
There's an armed gunman.
It's two o'clock in the morning.
You're gonna send
social workers, to
chat with the gunman.
I just need to understand
how their worldview works,
but I went back recently,
Rachel Peterson is
our chief researcher
and she pulled up
35 pages of material
on the actual Black Lives
Matter organization.
Now when you,
and it's founded
by three Marxist.
And when you read about
their real beliefs,
you begin to understand
they live in an
alternative worldview.
They live in a world where
the police are really,
very dangerous and they don't
quite have an explanation
for all the other
people get killed.
'Cause if you're an
African American male,
you're 300 times more likely
to be shot by a criminal
than by the police.
But that doesn't matter because,
the police are an extension of,
the authoritarian power of the
white male dominated culture,
which is what they're
really mad about.
Whereas if you just have to
get killed by your neighbor,
that doesn't really count.
So an eight year old girl
gets killed in Atlanta.
Well, that's unfortunate,
but it's not something
that Black Lives Matter
is gonna do anything about
'cause she wasn't
killed by a policeman.
Seven year old gets
killed in Chicago.
Well, that's really unfortunate,
but it's not really
a political event
'cause she wasn't
killed by a policeman.
So you really have this
very weird period underway
where the left has
no model to explain
how they would achieve
peace just as by the way,
they have no model to explain
how they would educate children.
You look at Baltimore, which
has the fourth most expensive
school system in the country
and has entire buildings.
And which not a single
child can pass the exam.
Not one, to which a Biden's
comments this week were,
"Maybe we need to quit
testing because after all
"it probably makes them feel bad
"that they didn't
pass the test."
- Right.
And then at the same time,
they don't seem to want school
choice or charter schools
to allow for more ability
to get a plurality of
education out there
and help these kids.
It's quite bizarre.
- Well they can't be
because Democratic Party
is a wholly owned subsidiary
of the teacher's union.
I think one of the recent
conventions, half the delegates
were from the teacher's union.
And the teacher's union
is essentially a machine
to get paid, has nothing
to do with teaching.
You can tell that by the fact
they don't wanna
go back to school.
And it has nothing to do
with effective teaching.
You can tell that because
look at Baltimore,
when you think of Baltimore
as a machine for the
payment of union members,
it is a remarkable system.
If you think of it as
an educational system,
it is an unbelievably
terrible system.
And the Democrats cannot.
They have no capacity to
take on the teacher's union
anywhere in the country.
So they basically say,
"Yeah, you might be
destroying the children,
"but at least a union will
help you get reelected."
- So with all this in mind,
what do you think
the Republicans,
if anything, could
be doing better
as we're watching
monuments being taken down
and we're watching the mob
just run across cities.
I see the Republicans are
sort of talking a tough game
and Trump's talking
a tough game,
but are they not doing something
that they actually
should be doing?
Because this stuff
isn't stopping?
- Well, look, I think there
are a couple of things
they should be doing.
First of all, in the long run,
the Republican
National Committee,
should go into every major
city and create a jobs,
prosperity and safety chapter
and start to organize
everybody in the city
to win municipal elections and
state legislative elections
for a second time
event people killed.
And then they'll plant a flag
in every one of these cities
and say, "We're gonna
reach out to everybody
"who is sick and tired
of having no jobs,
"no schools that work and
having your relative shot.
"And if that fits you, let's
sit down and talk about,
"how you can be accounted."
Not, we're not gonna
ask you to vote
for some traditional Republican,
but we're gonna try to help
you take back your city.
Second, I think that the
President has to look
at the example that
Bobby Kennedy set
in the early in the early 60s
when young volunteers were
being killed in Mississippi
during the civil
rights movement.
And it was clear that
the local sheriff
who may have been doing the
killing and the state police
were not gonna
defend these people.
And what they did is they said,
"Look, these are
American citizens.
"And if you're not gonna
defend them, we are."
And they sent in the FBI.
And I think in a
number of these places
that the young woman
in Indianapolis,
the mother of a three year old,
who was apparently
shot over the weekend
for saying all lives matter.
There's a perfect example
where she lost all
of her civil rights.
'Cause she's dead.
(Newt coughs)
I think they ought to say,
we are now gonna
create strike forces
that are gonna be prepared
to go into the South
side of Chicago,
prepared to go into New
York, any place which has,
is clearly spinning
out of control.
If you won't protect
your own citizens,
we will because they're
American citizens.
And I think we
have to be prepared
to be much more aggressive
and much tougher
about taking this on.
And then the last thing, we
ought to create much bigger
and more attractive
opportunities zones
with benefits so great.
And with education
opportunity is so great,
that we can actually
begin to create jobs
in the inner city,
everywhere in the country.
- Are you worried
with all that in mind
that this mix between COVID
and riots and protests
is gonna do sort of irreparable
damage to small business
across the board no
matter what at this point,
because if you weren't taken
out by COVID and now again,
with the lockdowns, if
you somehow survived,
I have a friend who called
me yesterday, who say
she's a misuse.
She usually goes
to people's homes.
She can't go to
people's homes anymore.
She got a little shop over
the last couple of weeks,
just a little one room place.
Now they closed her down
and she's thinking of
leaving California now.
And she's not even sure
what she's gonna do
for a living anymore.
That the average person,
the corporations can basically
deal with these big blows,
but the average person just
can't figure out a way to live
if every month something
crazy is gonna happen.
- Well, I mean, even
big corporations,
Brooks Brothers for example.
- Yeah.
- Which is almost
200 year old company,
may have actually be 200 years
old has filed for bankruptcy,
United Airlines.
I mean, even really big
places can get in trouble.
But the point you make is
important at a couple of levels.
I work very closely
with Alfredo Ortiz
and the Job Creators Network.
And they do terrific work,
helping small businesses.
And we have been much more
proactive than the Europeans.
They're trying to
help small businesses.
But, I think one of the
things you're gonna see
(Newt clears throat)
is people are gonna
leave California.
People are gonna
leave big cities.
I mean, I would not be at
all surprised to see New York
lose virtually everybody
who has any resources,
just because the
taxes are too high,
the streets will
be unsafe again.
People don't wanna be in a
place that's out of control.
If you look at Seattle,
they had the most radical
member of the city council
talks about getting Bezos.
Now Bezos is the richest
guy in the world.
So he's an obvious target
if you're a socialist,
but if you wanna drive
Amazon out of King County
and Seattle, you
wanna look at them.
Yeah, this is what AOC
did when she blocked them
from going into her
congressional district
and cost that part of New
York city, 25,000 jobs.
And I don't think this will
not surprise me one morning,
that Bezos announced the
Amazon was moving everything
out of Seattle and
the cost of the tax
both directly from
Amazon and indirectly
from all the workers
who would then leave
would be just staggering.
I mean, it would turn
Seattle into Detroit.
- All right.
So let's back up a little bit,
'cause I know we can
sort of focus on this
for the entire hour, but
I think your career sorta,
well, we can do several
hours on this easily.
But I think your career
in some of the things
that you have done
might help light away
that we can get out
of some of this stuff.
So when you were
Speaker of the House,
can you just talk
a little bit about
how Democrats and
Republicans could
or could not work together and
what you think has happened
that has led us to just,
I mean, there's
virtually none of it now,
how you were able to
make some of those fights
and build some of those bridges
or have some of
those bridges burned?
- Well I would point
out that in fact,
when the crisis
really hit the spring,
the House and Senate did manage
and they gave Steven Mnuchin,
Secretary of the Treasury,
some real credit,
but the House and Senate
actually worked together
and produced trillions
of dollars in spending.
I mean, that was they
did it pretty fast,
they did it pretty cleanly.
They also has been a steady
stream of small bills
that people can get
together and agree on.
Lamar Alexander, the Senator
from Tennessee is probably
the best example
that he's a genius
at figuring out
what they can do,
rather than what they can't do.
But, the key to what we
did was very explicit
and people wanna know about it.
That can read a very
simple small book
by Tom Evans called "The
Education of Ronald Reagan."
Reagan had after his movie
career and his TV career,
he ended up spending eight years
working for General Electric.
And it was really
interesting story
because he went around the
country as a spokesperson.
He talked gave about 375
speeches to factories.
So he had a lot of practice
talking to blue collar workers,
taking questions,
being a celebrity,
which was great preparation
for running for governor.
And in the process,
Reagan was in a period where
he wouldn't fly an airplane.
He did a really bouncy
flight in, I think late 45.
So he did not fly an
airplane again til 1965.
And so he went
everywhere by train.
And the guy he worked for
was a very conservative
intellectual,
the head of human relations
and union relations
of General Electric.
And so this guy
would give Reagan
conservative economic books.
So here you have Reagan driving,
riding across the
country in a train,
reading conservative economics,
preparing his speeches.
Well, Reagan came up with
a model which he really got
from this particular guy,
which Reagan summarized in
everyday language by saying,
"My job is to shine the
light on the American people,
"so they will turn up
the heat on Congress."
Well what that meant was,
you had to have a program
like three tax cuts
that was popular enough
that the American people would
say to their congressmen.
I really want you to pass this.
And I've been
arguing for example,
that the administration
should come out for
a one year holiday
in the payroll tax,
because it would be
enormously helpful--
- You go me.
- And the self-employed.
And it would be more
money in the pocket
of every single
working American.
And that would be the
kind of popular proposal,
that you could then
build heat on Pelosi.
Not 'cause you're in the
room negotiating with her,
but because you're talking
to the whole country
and the country is
telling her members,
"I really want you
to vote for this."
So I really think that
(Newt clears throat)
for example, when we finally
passed welfare reform,
there was a tie, there was
a poll 92% of the country,
thought we should
reform welfare,
including 88% of people
who were on welfare.
Well at that point, half
the Democrats voted with us.
It was 101 to 101
among Democrats,
because you went back
home and people said,
"You are gonna vote
for this aren't you?"
And I think that's the
real keys is pick fights
that are so popular,
that the American people
will pressure the Congress
into being for it.
- Do you think that's a
little more complex now
because of the cult of
personality around Trump
or just the way the
media talks about Trump
or what people think about Trump
or what they say
about half the country
that getting anything
that he wants done
is gonna inherently
be more difficult?
- Well, I think it's, to some
extent it's more difficult,
but on the other hand, he did,
they did a great job of
focusing on their tax cuts.
They got them through,
they got them approved,
and those are
certainly not things
that the Democrats wanted to do.
He did a very good,
he's done a very good job
building up the defense system
and communicating why
that's really important.
McConnell's done an amazing
job getting in the Senate,
getting conservative
judges approved
the most successful first term,
I think in American history.
So I would say it's a mixed bag.
I think Trump finds it.
I think at times his
personal aggressiveness
gets in the way of
his effectiveness.
And I think that sometimes
it's a little bit like
the Green Bay
Packers at their peak
had a great running
back in Jimmy Taylor
who would come to LSU and Taylor
was enormously strong guy.
And someone made
the comment one time
that about the fifth
year in the NFL,
Taylor finally realized it
was okay to go slow enough
that the pulling guard
to get ahead of you
and could actually
block for you.
You didn't have to go knock
everybody down by yourself.
I think Trump has
never quite learned
the Jimmy Taylor lesson that,
there are lots of people who
wanna help the President.
When he picks the
right big issues,
he could have a huge army
of people talking about it,
helping the Congress,
getting it through,
but that requires
a more slower paced
and more leadership style
rather than I can
do it all myself.
- Yeah.
Are you shocked in all
your years doing this
and in government and
now in consulting,
how often it seems
that the average person
doesn't know what's in
their best interests,
like something
you just mentioned
about the payroll tax cut
or just generally tax cuts.
I'm always for tax cuts,
you cut taxes on business,
now people are gonna
have more money.
You cut personal income tax,
people are gonna
have more money.
I would much rather
people decide
what to do with their
money than the government,
but yet a huge percentage
of people seem to think,
"Oh, we just have to keep
throwing money at things.
"No matter what
the evidence says."
Is that like just one
of the ongoing battles
that you have to have
sort of intellectually.
- Part of it is part of member,
some of it is self-serving.
I mean, if you're a racial
studies graduate from Harvard
and you have this great
new idea for a program
where the federal government
will hire 600 racial
studies experts,
to brainwash the rest of us.
I mean, you just figured out
a whole new career for yourself.
If you're the teacher's union,
you'd love to have more money.
I mean, that's understandable
the same thing's true
for the police
union, but I mean.
So there's a certain amount
of self-aggrandizement.
There's a certain look,
there's a fair amount of not
thinking about this stuff,
for the practical reason
that in a free society,
most of the time, you
shouldn't have to.
And our education system right
now is so totally screwed up.
And as Reagan once said,
"It's now what they don't know
"that's scary, it's what
they know that isn't true."
Let me say one more
thing about this stuff.
One of the great lessons
I learned was from a book
by Tony Schwartz called
the election game
and then how to win.
And I'm sorry.
I won't get the name,
the title right now,
I'm just gonna give
you the wrong title.
Anyway, Tony Schwartz was
a great radio consultant
who then went into politics.
He did a lots of radio ads
and he was very good at
understanding the idea
that was called "The
Responsive Chord."
His theory was, he wanted
to talk about something
that was already in your brain.
So all he's doing is
triggering the response.
He's not filling it up, but
he had a very good sound rule.
he said,
"Never underestimate
the intelligence of
the American people
"nor overestimate the amount
of information they have.
"Very often they won't
have the right information
"and so they'll look
like they don't know,
"but if you'll make sure to
get them the right information,
"they will then figure
out the right solution."
And I found in my career,
that was almost always true.
And I'm trying to convince,
frankly the
Republicans this year,
that if they'll calmly
and methodically
run a very fact-based campaign,
that they'll be shocked
at how well they'll do it.
For example,
in a Pew poll recently, three
out of four Americans oppose
defunding the police.
Now, and frankly of the 25%
who are in favor of defunding,
about half of them
don't wanna very much.
So the really hardcore
left wing radicals
are about 12 or
13% of the country.
Well, I mean,
Republicans ought to be
able to win that fight.
You ought to be able to beat
a whole bunch of House
Democrats who are running around
and then Senate Democrats,
and frankly since Biden,
no Biden is in this wishy washy.
"Well, I'm really not
for totally defunding
"but I'm for a little
bit defunding."
That ain't gonna cut it not.
Now when you say to him,
"So two weekends ago,
"there were 152 Americans shot
"in New York and
Chicago combined, 152.
"So Mr. Biden,
what's your answer
"to 152 Americans being shot?"
And the truth is
he has no answer.
- Are you shocked then that
they ended up going with Biden?
I mean, he's been
around forever.
I know you're no fan
of Hillary Clinton,
but at least there was some base
that was seriously
excited about her,
that that's undeniable,
but I don't see anyone
that's excited about Biden.
And if anything,
he's obviously having
some cognitive problems,
and the media seems to
be running cover for it.
And I don't mean that to be
glib or funny or anything.
I mean it's sad in a way,
but that there's no
excitement behind this thing.
Do you think they're gonna
regret that this was the choice?
- Well, you actually got
me to think something
I hadn't thought about.
There's a fascinating,
almost 180 degree opposite
between the Republican
selection process of 16,
and the Biden process.
In 16, Trump kept
knocking people out.
And then he started,
I think with Jeb Bush.
And he just methodically
went after people
and just kept knocking them out.
Biden, passively,
allowed everybody else
to shoot themselves.
So they would, I mean,
everybody got a shot at it
and everybody had
their moment in the sun
and then they fail.
And so people say, "Well,
not him or what not her."
And Biden ultimately was I
think relying on two things
he started the dance
with very high name ID.
I think only Sanders
had equal name ID.
And second,
he had spent eight years
standing next to Barack Obama.
And in South Carolina,
if you can carry the black
vote in the Democratic primary,
you will win the primary.
And his entire reason
for being, was to set up,
getting to South Carolina.
So as long as he didn't
knock himself out,
none of the rest of them had
the ability to knock him out.
And he just said to
be standing there
and then they did something
very smart, which is,
I'm sure they work
behind the scenes
and they got three or four
people to decide to endorse him
as soon as he won
South Carolina.
So you suddenly had this
momentum of excitement
that carries into Super Tuesday.
(Newt coughs)
And think about it by Super
Tuesday you're down to Sanders,
who however far to
the left Biden is
Sanders will always be 20
feet further to the left.
The Biden moves left, Sanders
move even further left.
So in the end Sanders,
his base was probably
40 or 45% of the party.
- Do you think we
have to do anything?
I know you're not a Democrat
obviously, but on either side,
as far as the primary process,
they run primaries
very differently.
We saw the disaster in Iowa.
Do you think we just have
to continue with this
or is there anything
in modern times
that we should do to
change some of this?
- I mean, look,
I think the Democratic
Party's incompetence in Iowa,
is just part of how badly
structured their party is.
I mean, we had a very similar
problem by the way in 12,
because the truth was that
Rick Santorum won Iowa.
The party chairman at that
time called it for Romney.
It took six or seven
days for it to be obvious
that it was Santorum.
So Santorum lost all of the
advantage he would have had
going into New Hampshire.
Romney had a false advantage.
And the state chairman,
I think was in fact,
economically leaning
towards Romney
in ways that were totally in a,
he had to resign.
So I mean we've had
some of our own problems
with this stuff,
but I think the primary
process at one level
was really a good thing
because it does allow you
to go out and meet people.
Now, the challenge is gonna be,
as we move into this age of
social media on the giant scale,
whether or not it makes
sense just because,
we've been in the middle of a
full blown presidential race,
I would guess for a year now.
And,
in that sense,
it's not clear to me how things
will evolve in the future.
Well, we also had absolute
proof for example,
that the Bloomberg spent
a couple $100 million
and got nowhere,
because in the end when you
watched him on a debate stage,
you just knew this
guy was impossible.
So, it's business, how
it shapes things out.
- Yeah.
When you were watching Bloomberg
in those two or three debates,
I mean, as a guy,
that was a great,
and are, you are
a great debater.
I mean, you knew how
to use the crowd,
you knew how to use humor,
you knew how to directly
go after opponent.
You must've been sort of painful
for you to watch
some of these guys
that just have no
idea how to debate.
Is it painful or is it shocking,
or do you feel good
about yourself out there?
- No, it's fun.
(Rubin laughs)
- I mean, look, as long
as it's the other side,
I'm happy for them
to be incompetent.
I don't feel like I
have an obligation to...
This is not like an
ice skating competition
where I'm gonna give
them a nine or an eight.
I watched some of it.
I don't actually watch
probably as much as I should
just 'cause I think it's boring
and I can only take so much
of it, but I'll tell ya.
And 16 and late 15,
I guess it really started
in the summer of 15.
I remember the first Fox debate,
which was the first
debate of the 2016 cycle.
And that's the one where
Megyn Kelly and Donald Trump,
there's knockdown
drag out fight.
And I was sitting at
home with Callista.
We were watching the debate,
but I was also watching
all the various online,
like Time Magazine and Vogue
and a whole bunch of, there
were all sorts of places
you could go to register
who you thought won
and about an hour and a
half after the debate.
And I watched Luntz and what
I thought was one of the most
inaccurate focus
groups he'd ever done.
I like Frank a lot,
we are old friends.
But what happened was,
you'd have to be very careful
on things like focus groups
because a group
mindset will set in.
And if people conclude,
that he must have done bad
because she said he did this,
so he must have done bad.
And I don't wanna be the guy
guys that said he did good.
So what was happening
was all of the experts
were trashing Trump.
Luntz's focus group
was trashing Trump,
but in a field of 16 candidates,
he was getting 60 to 70%
of the vote in these
online surveys.
And I remember turning to
Callista about midnight
I guess, and saying,
"As a historian, there's
an anomaly building here,
"the gap between lead opinion
and the average American
"is getting so big that we
should watch this carefully
"because something's going
on, we don't understand."
And that's really
how I approach that.
I use a model of listen,
learn, help and lead.
And I really find that
the world's so big
and changes so constantly
that I have to listen and
learn all the time and I...
So I approach every
activity with a,
"I wonder what I'll
learn from it."
- Huh?
You'll probably find this
interesting actually,
when I had David Horowitz on
who I'm sure you either know,
or certainly know this work.
- Yeah, I know him.
- I asked him,
when did he realize that
Trump was the real deal?
And he said, it was
the exact moment
that Trump got into the
fight with Megyn Kelly
because he realized nobody
else would have ever done it,
and that was it.
And he fully went there.
Let's talk a little bit
about history though,
because we seem
to be in this time
where we're erasing history,
is there something that
for my younger audience,
some piece of American history
that maybe isn't
the most known piece
that you think people
should know more about
that might help us get a
lens on what's going on now?
- Sure.
I wrote three novels about
the Revolutionary War
and four novels about,
no four novels
about the Civil War.
I think the most amazing moment
in the history of America,
is Christmas night, 1776.
We did it in a book called "The
times That Try Men's Souls"
which is the quote from
Paine's "The Crisis."
Washington's army has shrunk
from 30,000 in September,
to about 2,500.
And they have a council of
war and Washington says,
"Most of these guys,
"enlistments end first or
second week of January.
"And if we don't do something,
the army will disappear."
And he says, "Now all
of us in this room,
"have no risk because
if the army disappears,
"we're all gonna be hung."
So we can take really
big risks because
(Newt laughs)
our life's already forfeit.
And so he came up with a
plan, which is complicated,
really complicated,
you cross a icy river in the
middle of a snow storm at night
in three different places.
He would lead the main elements.
He had,
(Newt clears throat)
as a sign of great leadership.
He had taken Thomas Paine
who had written an amazing
pamphlet called "Common Sense"
which explained the
Revolutionary War
to everyday people.
And Paine had enlisted
as a rifleman.
And on the way
through New Jersey,
Washington took
him aside and said,
"Go to Philadelphia
and write a pamphlet
"that explains why...?
"What do we do?
"We all thought this
was gonna be easy
"Well, it's gonna be hard.
"And we need somebody
to explain it to us."
So Paine literally had
gone to Philadelphia
and wrote "The Crisis."
Washington had his officers read
from the opening
chapter of "The Crisis"
as the men got in the
boats to cross the river.
- [Rubin] Wow.
- When they finished
crossing the river,
they marched eight miles
in a snow storm at night.
One third of them
did not have boots
and had wrapped their
feet in burlap bags.
The next morning they surprised
the professional German
soldiers captured 800 of them
and ran like crazy
and cross the river
before the British
army could get there.
The news of that victory,
brought 15,000
volunteers in two weeks.
It's the decisive
moment of the war.
Now I cite that for younger
people because all of these
totally uninformed idiots
who downplay Washington,
have no idea what real life is.
You know, real life is not being
coddled in some university,
surrounded by people who make
sure you have a safe space.
Real life is facing
gigantic challenges
and finding the character and
the courage and the endurance
to build something,
to do something real.
And this country stands on
George Washington shoulders.
We would not have won the
Revolutionary War without him.
We might not have gotten
the Constitutional
Convention without him.
And he served as our first
president for eight years
and established precedents
which to this day
are the mark of freedom.
And I would just
say it is tragic
that we've allowed three
generations of brainwashing
to destroy the understanding
of the real America
for millions of young Americans.
- Well, it's an
inspirational story,
but I can't end with that.
So we're gonna have to end.
I can't end with that sort of,
I can't end with
that sort of ending
of what we've done to
the three generations.
So let's clean it up.
Let's clean it up in a way.
I know you will do well,
which is for all of the people
that are worried right now,
they're worried
about their jobs.
They're worried about the
political polarization.
They're worried about
lockdowns and COVID
and everything else.
Can you paint a bit of a
future that they can be hopeful
for, that can get
us out of this?
- Yeah.
I mean, you see it beginning
to happen all around you.
We're gonna have an
explosive increase
in the ability to
educate people.
The recent announcements by
Amazon and Google and others
and Apple,
we're gonna have remarkable
capacity to people
go and get great job.
We're gonna become once again,
the number one industrial
country in the world,
we're gonna remain the
number one producer of energy
in the world.
We're gonna get to
the moon by 2024.
And we're gonna be
on Mars by 2033.
Our children and grandchildren
are going to be literally
mining asteroids
and running commercial
hotels in space.
We will have
breakthroughs in medicine.
We're about to have, I think,
a cure for sickle cell anemia,
which will be of
enormous importance to
the black community.
When we get aging
declared as a disease,
so that the NIH can actually
focus on lengthening lives.
I think the odds are very
good that we are going to have
something like the average
person living very healthfully,
to 110 or 120, not
getting ancient,
but literally being active
and having a full life.
So I think the long run
trajectory of the human race
is pretty good.
Do we have problems?
Sure.
We've always had problems.
It's the nature of life.
But I think that young people
have every reason to believe
that by the end of their lives,
the world will be more
interesting, more exciting,
more prosperous,
and the opportunity for
adventure will be even greater.
- I knew you could do it,
Mr. Speaker, how do we,
where should I send people?
You've got like 1,000 websites
and a million projects.
Where can we send people to?
You're not retiring
anytime soon I know that.
- My newsletters, my
podcasts, my books,
all those things
are Gingrich 360.
They can also of course
get the books that either
Barnes & Noble, Amazon,
or any major bookstore.
And I'm very proud of "Trump
and the American Future."
'Cause I think it captures
some of this extraordinary gap
between a bad
future with the left
and an amazingly good future,
if we win this
election this fall
- If you're looking for
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check out our politics playlist.
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