In this interview, Newt talks about the left’s agenda under President Biden and what conservatives must do to fight back.
Transcript:
Newt Gingrich
Life, Liberty & Levin
January 24, 2021
NEWT:
I am doing well, you know the country is worrisome, I think. We’re in a very dangerous period.
NEWT:
I think it is very similar to the civil war period in that you have two forces that deeply disagree. Each of which in the end feels threatened that it has to defend itself at levels we very seldom see in American history. And on the left you have a level of hatred, and a level of bitterness. That is amazing. Someone at New York Times write if Biden really wanted unity, he should lynch Vice President Pence. And other people say we should take their children away and send them to reeducation camps, the degree to which the left hates America, hate conservatives, hate those who’ to believe in rule of law, and feels self-righteous. In their positions. That is really quite astonishing. I think is a genuine threat to survival of America.
NEWT:
Well, they can’t be Biden has to be seen as part of a Biden gang. All of people he is appointing many of whom are very radical, some of whom have gotten huge amounts of money out of China, these people are all moving in a direction of very left wing, very radical, and very anti-American behaviors. And so, I thought it was appalling. Calista and I actually watched the inauguration address on an airplane coming back from Rome, and I thought the speech was fine, it was almost a speech that Eisenhower would have given. But he promptly goes to White House, and then next 3 hours, destroys every single thing he said in the speech. It is as though he beliefs unity means surrender and our job to surrender and the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump, which is massively more than ever voted for any Republican before in American history, which is why not a single Republican should vote to pursue the impeachment. They have no moral standing for taking on a man who got 74 million votes and telling him he can’t run again. If you think about it the whole concept anti-democratic and is sort an elitist dictatorship telling us rest of us what to think and what we are allowed to do. Hard as a historian, to expression how truly radical a moment this is in American history and what a profound break it is in the American system.
NEWT:
That is exactly what the Democrats hope to do. That’s why they want to make the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico states, to add four Democratic Senators to the U.S. Senate. It is very clear the Democratic model is to allow anyone to vote who no identity with no prior registration with no ability to know whether or not they voted 10 times and then add to that the Biden proposal to create citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants and you suddenly have a package for turning whole country into California, if you look at disaster California is becoming, hard to imagine why, if you are anyone except a union leader and a democratic politician, you could not want country to become like California. Now what we face is we have a combination of left-wing radicals, union leaders, and Democratic politicians, and that coalition right now, is dominating the news media dominates the internet, and doing everything it can to consolidate power. And eliminate its competitors.
NEWT:
For all practical purposes we don’t have any news media, what we have propaganda media, they are all in tank for left, they are going to report things in a non-factual one-sided basis, they have bought everything the left wants them to buy. They desperately want to be acceptable to left wing radicals. And so you get unending hostility, not just to Trump, but unending of hostility to anyone that supported him. Here you have a candidate who is an incumbent president who got 74 million votes, and you have 500 young staffers in publishing housing signing a letter saying nobody who worked for Trump should be allowed to publish a book, it is amazing to me how deep it has penetrated the American system, whether academic campuses or for example, you end up with at least a — losing her advisory role at Kennedy Center at Harvard even though she is a graduate of the Kennedy and arguably one of the brightest young bright Republican woman in the Congress. This is an endless desire if you are going to be different than us, we have to destroy you we have to drive you out of public life. And I think it is very sobering and I think it’s very frightening, I think about the world my grandchildren are going to live in and I worry very much that it will very much resemble what you describe, the Constitution, the rule of law, genuine freedom on both sides for conservatives and liberals to have a genuine opportunity to participate, I really worry that the whole system will be crushed under this kind of left-wing tyranny.
NEWT:
It is exactly what we’ve been talking about. We have a totalitarian movement that wants to crush all decent, that wants to drive its opponents out public life, that when it says word unity it means surrender, it means as you pointed out conformity. Conformity to them. And if you are not prepared to — if you are not prepared to surrender, you should expect to be punished and have an effort to drive you from public life. This is truly an extraordinary moment in American history. But to go a stage further it also reminds you if you are to list every Democrat who said horrifying things about Republicans and cited things about Republicans started with Waters who went out and said, you should hunt them down, at restaurants and grocery stores, you look at her statement, if that is not incitement, then I don’t know what incitement. I would go a step further than that we have to have the courage, and this is a perfect example for fight for freedom for all of human history, we have to have the courage to stand, look them in the eye, and fight back. Not cave, not give in. If anything, conservatives should be praising Cruz and Hawley for having courage, and praising house Republicans for having courage. And we should get to be as good, when Marriot announces they will not give money to Republicans the Republican national committee should announce an effort that no Republican stay at Marriott, it will not take many weeks of Republicans canceling at Marriott before their board of directors is going to say, maybe this is not a smart idea, right now you live with all pressure on left, the right passive and sits there defensively whining and then you have Swalwell who sent several years in a relationship with a woman who is a Chinese spy, she is appointed to impeachment management group, and is still is back on the intelligence committee and the Republicans ought to be moving to take him off this is how crazy and how sick their system has become.
NEWT:
She lives in enclave that is guarded in San Francisco, she is surrounded by left wing loonie tunes that think it is — okay to live in a city, there is a map you can go on internet, they show you where feces were they won’t distinguish between dog and human, but show the feces count that day in San Francisco. This is the same problem with Kamala Harris they come from center of left wing nuttiness, and all their friends at the local country club and all their friends when they go to a cocktail party they think this craziness makes sense. In addition over her many years, going back to when her father and brother were the mayors of Baltimore, Nancy has been in politics so long that she operates like a genuine machine politician of old order, and she does not mind abusing power she doesn’t mind running over people, I would say she is the most dangerous Speaker of the House we’ve had probably in American history, because she is so willing to break the rules, and to frank just say things untrue.
NEWT:
You have right now with the pros press corps are left wing lap dogs, and their job is to go over and lick hands of left wingers and try to bite the hands of the Republicans, they are behaving the way they have been trained to behave. We still have a republic, but it is getting weaker every day. The left is working every day, I thought it was the telling that two of the executive orders of first day after giving a speech on unity, two executive orders, one killed the committee 1776 which I urge everyone to read, that was an effort to reestablish a serious American history and a response to the New York Times totally false 1619 narrative arguing that slavery is the heart of America. And so, the reason they went on the very first day to kill the 1796 commission is because it is a mortal threat. And that’s why I urge everyone to read it and realize this is what scares the left more than everything. The second thing they did that we did not even see the beginning of the response to is they basically eliminated women from athletics. When you start allowing males who have become by the way self-defined females, when you allow males to compete most of women sports will become dominated by men. Something people haven’t come to grips yet, they just did it with a splash of a pen.
NEWT:
You sort of put your finger on it. First of all, energy as President Trump developed it, made us independent, increased our leverage with Iran, over leverage with China, and with Russia and the Middle East, gave us source of money, jobs and a much better balance of payments. So energy is very pro-America. Well, if you are a true leftist, anything pro American is bad. Second energy in enough quantities lowers the cost of living and increases freedom. And if you are a good classic left winger, you don’t want people out there with cars you want public transportation. You don’t want them to be free to go where they want to go, you want to tell them where they should go. There is a huge gap between the left wing’s desire to dominate and control all of us and the fact that the lower cost of energy the more freedom you and I have, the more choices we have. And better quality of life we have. It’s a nightmare for true left winger because if this stuff all just works, we would not need them. That is their whole point basically the left is about power. They want power over our lives, and successful energy industry, creates jobs, lowers cost of energy, and increasing options and increases freedom for the American people, those are all values that left hates.
NEWT:
Well, I think that when president in the inaugural promised to always tell the truth and always be open, the real test is where did the money come from for the university of Pennsylvania and for university of Delaware. And his secretary of state, actually running his program at university of Pennsylvania, which we believe got at least 22 million-dollar from communist China. So, over the 4 years that Biden was out there, as a private citizen, how much money came from communist China, not just to the Hunter Biden commercial stuff but straight forward, the universities will not reveal where money came from or how they spend it. And we know in case of university of Pennsylvania, aim from China has more than tripled in the last years, and is really coming close to 100 million, they will not tell us a single piece of information, I think that is a case you have to look at. Across the board Biden administration will be filled with people who are very friendly to China, and I think it is a real challenge, you are right, Xi Jinping, the dictator of China, loving watching American when it is caught up in this turmoil, makes him feel more secure that China will someday be the dominant country.
NEWT:
I have, I thought it was very surprising that President Biden immediately took out five military flags for the American military services, which you know, combined with fact that national Guard, having been praised for protecting capitol now finds itself literally sleeping in public parking garages, out in the open a pretty cold period, that is just, you know against military behavior of the left is amazing, just as anti-police behavior is amazing except when they feel threatened at which point they really hope they have the police they don’t want to pay for. And I think what is going on is they are throwing so much stuff at us, so fast, that it will take weeks to sort it out just how crazy they are and how much many of these things in the long run are going to be repudiated by the American people. And I think that’s their goal just dump it out, make it impossible to cover and forcing change on the country before the country understands exactly what they are doing.
NEWT:
You know when I became speaker the very first Friday after the election, I was speaking at the heritage foundation, I said I will cooperate, but will not compromise, that was the basis for everything we did for the 4 years I was speaker. We ought to have the same attitude, if he wants unity, we’ll talk about him about what unity is, if he wants to use word unity but really mean surrender, he won’t get anything, A good example, I was very disappointed that Blinkin who is the new secretary of state was not even asked about the money that the institution that the headed up for Biden got from China. It is Blinken who is presiding over 20 or 40 million dollars, coming from communist China while Biden is out here as a presidential candidate, I would have thought there is a place for the Republicans to have legitimately have said, we’re going to put your nomination on hold until you release the information, we could figure out how much influence the China have bought, but instead they were passive. And makes no sense to me, to pretend this administration that will be moderate, this is a hard left administration staffed with hard left people, you could tell from first day their executive orders are creating a radically different America, and one that most Americans will not like.