00:00:09.000Today on the Charlie Kirk Show, we are joined by the Speaker of the House, the former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, one of the smartest, wisest people in the country and in the conservative movement.
00:00:19.000Newt Gingrich joins us to talk about Trump, America, and so much more.
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00:00:57.000Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:00:59.000I am so thrilled and thankful to be joined by someone that I have learned so much from throughout the years, Speaker Newt Gingrich.
00:01:08.000And Mr. Gingrich, thank you so much for joining the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:01:10.000You have a new book called Trump and the American Future: Solving the Great Problems of Our Time.
00:01:16.000Please tell us why you wrote this book.
00:01:18.000And also, I think it's pretty timely considering the upcoming election.
00:01:22.000Well, yeah, it occurred to me late last year that the way the Democrats were moving to the left, this would be the biggest choice since Lincoln in 1864 ran for reelection against somebody who was willing to surrender to the South, break up the Union, and preserve slavery.
00:01:42.000And when I look at where Trump is trying to take the country in terms of jobs and free enterprise and conservative judges and a strong pro-American trade and defense policy, and then I look at where a Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer team would take the country, I just think it's the biggest gap we've seen, certainly in the last 160 years.
00:02:08.000So I wanted to write a book that sort of armed our side and said, here are the facts, here's the context, here's what you can say to people who aren't sure.
00:02:18.000And I think Trump and the American Future really lays out the big issues, some of them, frankly, a little scary.
00:02:25.000I mean, we finished the book in March, and we have a section in there on the Democrats' willingness to support crime and oppose the police.
00:02:35.000And that chapter now is coming alive every evening.
00:02:38.000So I look at stuff like that, and I think we sort of caught the big underlying river that's coming down our way in terms of left-wingism and the world they would create if they could.
00:02:52.000So in the 1990s, you balanced the budget and worked with Bill Clinton and the Democrats to accomplish serious reforms that helped our country.
00:03:00.000It seems as if today it's no longer that we can cooperate with Democrats.
00:03:03.000We have no choice but to defeat them and to basically repudiate their awful ideas.
00:03:09.000Can you give us some idea of what happened since the 1990s to now with the Democrat Party?
00:03:15.000I think Ronald Reagan in the 80s created a national consensus.
00:03:21.000And people have forgotten, but Bill Clinton helped organize a centrist group of Democrats and really ran as a centrist Democrat, much as Tony Blair would do with the Labor Party in Great Britain.
00:03:33.000So basically, I mean, one of the key themes of the Clinton campaign was ending welfare as we know it.
00:03:41.000So if you're a liberal, you thought that meant more money.
00:03:43.000If you're a conservative, you thought it meant less.
00:03:45.000But nonetheless, it was indicating people were tired of things.
00:03:49.000In the 90s, we were a period, for example, where out of sheer desperation with crime, New Yorkers turned to Rudy Giuliani.
00:03:56.000And in the most successful reform crime that I know of in history, within two years, he begun to bring the murder rate down dramatically.
00:04:06.000So I think what happened was we existed at a moment when for about half the Democratic Party, and when we did welfare reform, we split the Democratic Party 101 to 101 in the House, literally half.
00:04:21.000For about half the Democratic Party plus the Democratic president, there was a common ground that had been created by Reagan that they could negotiate with us on.
00:04:32.000For the other half of the Democratic Party, who came to hate Clinton because they saw him as a total sellout, they were rapidly opposed to us, deeply, bitterly, but they weren't the president and they weren't big enough to stop us.
00:04:47.000I think what happened was the Gore-Bush election of 2000 left a lot of liberals thinking that Gore had really won because he had a plurality of the vote, but did not win the Electoral College, almost like 2016.
00:05:04.000And then Bush ran a very brass knuckles campaign against Kerry in 2004.
00:05:11.000And that left a bad taste among Democrats.
00:05:15.000And they nominated somebody who on the surface was very reasonable.
00:05:19.000And this was one of the things where I think all of us just frankly made a big mistake.
00:05:24.000Barack Obama was a neighborhood organizer, which we joked about.
00:05:28.000But in fact, in the language of the left, the neighborhood organizer is the radical who is organizing, much like Antifa or Black Lives Matter.
00:05:38.000I mean, it's really part of a Marxist construct.
00:05:41.000And the only person in 2008 who really understood this was Sean Hannity because he'd read all the key books.
00:06:58.000I watched Mayor Wheeler, Portland, the other night.
00:07:02.000And I just wrote a newsletter at Ganglish 360 entitled The Democrats are the Lion King Party.
00:07:09.000Because if you watch them, whether it's in foreign policy or it's at home, they don't believe predators exist.
00:07:16.000They think lions and zebras and warthogs are supposed to get along together and sing together and dance together.
00:07:22.000And if you watch Wheeler, after 94 consecutive days of violence, having had a Trump supporter killed in cold blood, and the strongest he can do is pathetically appeal to people, please don't be violent.
00:07:36.000And I watched and I thought, this is sort of the end of the left as the defender of Western civilization.
00:07:44.000So, Mr. Speaker, in 2012, when you were running for the presidency, I was a senior in high school and I was watching C-SPAN, and you said something repeatedly.
00:07:53.000You said Barack Obama is an Alinskyite.
00:07:56.000And you said it, and you might remember it made a lot of news because it really bothered the mainstream media because you were unafraid to call him out for what he was.
00:08:05.000I'd never heard the term before, but then I looked up Saul Linsky and I ended up reading Rules for Radicals.
00:08:12.000You were one of the few people that introduced this idea of Alinskyite tactics into the mainstream of conservative thinking.
00:08:20.000I think that's been a really significant contribution because when I visit Tea Party groups or Republican groups, almost everyone has an understanding of Saul Linsky.
00:08:28.000My question, though, is: do you think that because of how individuals like Mayor Wheeler and Nancy Pelosi are no longer hiding their radicalism?
00:08:38.000Do you think that Alinskyite tactics are now being put by the wayside?
00:08:42.000Because the Saul Linsky way of approaching things would not being say, he would never say get rid of Mount Rushmore.
00:08:48.000He'd never say get rid of the American flag.
00:08:50.000He would say, disguise yourself as something as who you're not, slick back your hair, take over the institutions, and then you can do those things.
00:08:57.000Do you think that there's some tension right now between the radicalism that's revealing itself and the prior Alinskyite tactics that was more of a camouflage for communism?
00:09:08.000Well, I mean, first of all, I do want to go back and repeat.
00:09:11.000I got it from Sean Hannity, who was the first person.
00:09:14.000And when he first said it, I thought it was nuts.
00:09:17.000And he kept going on and on about the relationship that Obama had with Bill Ayers, who'd been a weatherman, who had set bombs and tried to kill people, who actually on 9-11 was quoted as saying his only regret was he hadn't set more bombs.
00:09:34.000I mean, so Sean really got the rhythm of this thing.
00:09:38.000And I went about exploring it some more.
00:09:40.000And I'd known about Alinsky for many years.
00:09:42.000And by the way, Hillary Clinton's senior paper was on Alinsky, and she was a very close personal friend of Alinsky.
00:09:52.000So it's easy to forget how deep the radicalism of the Chicago left was.
00:10:01.000I think among the senior Democrats, there's a kind of desperation that four more years of Trump will come very close to ending their world.
00:11:14.000And in fact, of the people who've been arrested so far in Kenosha, I think 44 different states are represented.
00:11:22.000And so what you're seeing is a younger generation of very hardline, almost like the young Nazis or young communists in the 30s, who are willfully out there trying to destroy things.
00:11:35.000These are the people who were trying to attack Senator Rand Paul the other night.
00:11:39.000I mean, these are people who, frankly, are stunningly dangerous physically.
00:11:45.000And then there's the older crowd who really, this is their last stand, and they also don't have any choice.
00:11:54.000The Democrats for life tried to have a caucus meeting at the convention and were told no.
00:12:00.000I mean, if you went and said, I'd like to have a pro-police caucus at the Democratic National Convention, they'd have just said, you know, you're in the wrong party.
00:12:13.000And what you're putting so well is the lack of discipline amongst some of the younger revolutionaries and some of the last stand of the Schumer-Pelosi kind of wing of the party, where you are correct that if Trump does win four more years, people are predicting endless violence.
00:12:28.000I think that there might be some unrest immediately, but I'm of the opinion that it actually might be a deathblow to the left, the likes of which we haven't seen in quite some time, because they've so overextended themselves on a referendum of the president politically that another four years, I think that it will really deflate them and cause a Democrat civil war that is long overdue, which is what I want to ask you about.
00:12:49.000What do you make about these kind of coalition of Democrat groups that quite honestly have very little in common with each other, such as the corporate wing of the Democrat Party that is playing nice with the Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Casio-Cortez wing of the party?
00:13:01.000I'm of the opinion the sooner we can get them to have them fight amongst themselves, it's actually going to be much healthier for our country.
00:13:08.000One of the few reasons as to why the president, I think, has a more difficult road to reelection than he should is because of how unified the entire left has been towards defeating him, when in reality, the Democrat Party is really more ideologically fractured than the Republican Party.
00:13:27.000Do you think there's something we make of that?
00:13:30.000I mean, first of all, I think you're right.
00:13:33.000I think it's a coalition with very, very different interests.
00:13:38.000I also think that it's essentially the anti-Trump Party.
00:13:42.000I mean, you saw this happen with Andrew Jackson in the 1820s and 1830s, where he was such a disruptive and such a polarizing figure that everybody who didn't like him joined the Whigs.
00:13:54.000And the Whigs grew up actually in response to Jackson and then disappeared in the 1850s.
00:14:01.000So I think that what you have is a party currently being held together by Donald Trump, ironically.
00:14:10.000And I think that they will break up a lot.
00:14:13.000If Trump gets re-elected, especially if, as a consequence of that re-election, Kevin McCarthy becomes Speaker and we pick up a couple seats in the Senate, which I think is very likely.
00:14:27.000At that point, I think for sort of the corporate types and for the more traditional politicians, reality will set in and they'll try to find some way to accommodate the president.
00:14:41.000I mean, Trump coming into a second term, understanding Washington dramatically better than he did in 2016, with a cabinet already in place, with a senior staff at the White House already in place, he will be very formidable.
00:14:55.000And these guys are mostly timid and cowards.
00:14:58.000I mean, money, there's an old story that money is a coward and will always flee when threatened.
00:15:04.000And so I think you'll suddenly see all these corporate CEOs try to find a way to get along with Trump.
00:15:12.000I think, on the other hand, a Trump victory would derange the younger radicals.
00:15:17.000I mean, if you remember, the day after his inaugural, you ended up with Madonna saying that she dreams of seeing the White House blown up.
00:15:27.000Now, you know, I can't quite imagine what they'll say if they wake up the morning at the election and Trump has been re-elected.
00:15:35.000But for the hardline radicals, I suspect they'll take to the streets and they'll go down fighting.
00:15:42.000This has been a continuation of the Occupy Wall Street.
00:15:45.000There's been a long cycle here that people tend to forget.
00:15:48.000And I think that they would almost be beside themselves.
00:15:52.000It would resemble the Samurai charges of 1868, where they preferred dying to giving up their swords.
00:15:59.000And I think these people would all go into the street and have a great last stand for left-wing radicalism.
00:16:07.000And so in your book, you devote a lot of chapters, a couple of chapters, and a lot of space to healthcare.
00:16:15.000And I think this is something the Republican Party has gotten so, I don't want to say wrong.
00:16:20.000I just think that they're either contradictory or they don't understand the issue very well.
00:16:24.000I'm just going to give you one personal frustration.
00:16:27.000One of the reasons why you were able to win back the House in the 90s is you ran on very specific promises to the American people of a contract with America.
00:16:34.000Why House Republicans don't do that now is beyond me.
00:16:38.000A lot of people think in terms of lists.
00:16:41.000Maybe you can offer some insight or some wisdom.
00:16:43.000I tell them every time I see the leadership in the Republican Party, I say, did you not learn anything in the 90s?
00:16:48.000Can you just comment on that and then segue into the healthcare portion of your book?
00:16:52.000Yeah, I mean, the answer to that's no.
00:16:56.000Parties are large cultural institutions and they don't change very fast.
00:17:01.000Reagan came along, showed them how to do it, and they promptly forgot.
00:17:04.000I came along and showed them how to do it again, and they promptly forgot.
00:17:08.000And Trump has come along, and they've split into those who bitterly resent him and those who follow him but don't necessarily understand why they're applauding.
00:17:16.000But that's the nature of big institutions like this.
00:17:21.000Look, I believe we should be for a patient-centered, customer-style, market-oriented health system.
00:17:30.000And we ought to say it bluntly, directly, aggressively, which means one of the things I'm most passionate about is transparency of cost.
00:17:39.000You have every right to know what your back operation is going to cost as you do to walk into Walmart and know what a TV is going to cost.
00:17:48.000And if we had a system where you went all the way through Walmart and not knowing any prices and you didn't learn the price until you checked out and you couldn't, by the way, return anything, people would think it was insane.
00:18:01.000But you have a conspiracy between doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, medical technology companies to block the individual from knowing accurately what it's going to cost them.
00:18:16.000We believe that one change, allowing you to know what your health care is going to cost, probably would take 40% out of the system.
00:18:35.000What's been really interesting, though, Mr. Speaker, and I'd love to have your opinion on this, and you kind of touched on it, is the forces that are fighting against this very common sense pro-market reform.
00:18:45.000I'm a Milton Friedman guy, but one thing that Milton Friedman talked about is the need for a price system.
00:18:50.000If you don't know prices, a market is not truly a market.
00:18:53.000Everyone's just flying blind, and there's a lack of information there.
00:18:57.000What do you have to say to some of the people that are saying that some of the reforms you're proposing are anti-free market?
00:19:04.000I don't hold that view, but that is something that some of the strict libertarians say towards us when we're trying to put forth these transparency reforms.
00:19:30.000This is an anti-market system of oligopolies, huge hospitals, huge insurance companies, huge medical technology companies.
00:19:40.000You know, the medical technology company signs a contract with a hospital that insists that the price is secret.
00:19:48.000Now, why should I mean, that's not libertarianism.
00:19:53.000That is a, you know, Adam Smith said at one point: anytime a group of businessmen get together, it's a conspiracy against the consumer.
00:20:01.000I am a consumer-oriented free market guy.
00:20:05.000I am not a producer-oriented free market guy.
00:20:08.000I want the consumer to have the widest range of choices, and then the producer's got to go out there and work hard and invent in order to earn the participation of the consumer.
00:20:20.000And I think it's very important for us to understand the difference of the two.
00:20:24.000You have every right to know, and frankly, the same thing goes for surprise billing, where you think everything's paid for, but oh, they didn't tell you this is a true story.
00:20:35.000They didn't tell you the anesthesiologist wasn't part of the package.
00:21:07.000And so, some people, and I think there's a divide happening, and I think this population is very small, and it's mostly focused in Washington, D.C., at very well-funded think tanks that probably have financial relationships with these companies that are pushing for it.
00:21:20.000Because I can't really find any sort of public interest or consumer advocacy argument to say that when someone walks into the emergency room, I've had this experience recently, there are no posted prices.
00:21:33.000I travel quite a lot, so I'm out of network, and then I get some sort of a bill a couple weeks later.
00:21:39.000As you said, that is so extreme that you almost are less likely to go into a hospital, and you're less likely to even go into the healthcare network.
00:21:48.000And you probably got a bill you couldn't read.
00:22:00.000No, look, and I think this has been part of, I've done a lot on healthcare since 1974 when I first ran for Congress.
00:22:08.000I wrote a book called Saving Lives and Saving Money.
00:22:11.000I founded the Center for Health Transformation.
00:22:13.000And I absolutely believe, I was shocked when I left the speakership.
00:22:18.000I decided I would focus on national security and on health because they're both life and death and they're both very big and complex.
00:22:25.000I was shocked after the first two years to realize that the biggest impediment to health reform is the health system.
00:22:33.000And that it's a whole range of different things, but that who you're ultimately really fighting with are the people who have a pretty good deal.
00:22:42.000The multi-million dollar hospital administrator.
00:22:45.000I mean, anybody, I had Betsy McCoy on my podcast a couple of weeks ago, former Lieutenant Governor of New York, brilliant woman.
00:22:52.000And she was commenting on the impact of the New York Hospital Association lobbyist on Governor Cuomo's decision to put senior citizens in nursing homes who were already infected, which probably killed between 6,000 and 12,000 senior citizens.
00:23:09.000It was basically taking care of the hospital association who has the highest paid lobbyists in New York.
00:23:17.000And so I would say to my libertarian friends: you know, in the real world, the fact is the game is currently rigged by the big boys against the average American in health.
00:23:29.000And the left's answer is to add a layer of bureaucracy.
00:23:32.000And the rights answer ought to be to give you the power for you to know what you're going to get and what you're going to pay.
00:23:41.000And I think it also resonates with younger voters as well.
00:23:43.000When I talk about health care, I think it's a much better option, obviously, than socialized Medicare for all.
00:23:50.000And so here's my question, Mr. Speaker, is as we're talking about these issues to challenge kind of the corporate interests on behalf of the consumer and being able to effectuate that change, something we run into is how much power these corporations have in being able to influence politicians and bureaucrats.
00:24:07.000For example, the president signs an executive order for price transparency within a moment's notice.
00:24:13.000The hospital is suing him and putting him into the courts.
00:24:16.000Would you advocate at all in any sort of campaign finance reform or being able to have at least some sort of changes in how our politicians' elections are funded?
00:24:27.000And I only say this because some of these very simple ideas seem to be nearly impossible to put forth legislatively because of how much the capital flow from these special interests towards the legislative process.
00:24:41.000I think this is an area where the cure is continuously worse than the disease, because you have to set up some kind of a rig system, which you then have to have the government enforce.
00:24:53.000And then you have smart people who figure out how to get around the system.
00:24:58.000I've always said, for example, that the easiest election reform is to allow anyone to accept any amount of personal or corporate money under the Citizens United rule directly into your campaign, as long as you report it that night.
00:25:15.000So on the internet, and my reasoning is middle-class candidates could raise the money to defeat rich people, but they can't do it if they're limited to $2,500 or $2,700 a donation.
00:25:29.000And the rich person can write a $20 million, or in the case of Bloomberg, $200 million check.
00:25:34.000On the other hand, Bloomberg is a great, excuse me, is a great case study, but money is not enough.
00:25:42.000You know, if you're a big enough jerk, the country figures it out no matter how many ads you buy.
00:25:49.000I ask because there's a big movement for campaign finance reform, and I think that sort of reform makes a lot of sense because it actually trusts the people to look within 24 hours.
00:25:59.000I think the issue is the dark money packs that are not disclosed, that do things on behalf of a candidate with almost an unspoken quid pro quo.
00:26:08.000I think that's where the relationship really breaks down.
00:26:40.000I think it's widely accepted based on Joe Biden now being flushed out of his shelter-in-place strategy to win the White House and actually trying to do his version of campaigning.
00:26:52.000Don Lemon kind of signaled the fire alarm last week when he said that not that they care about the rioting and the looting for people's livelihoods being destroyed, but it's showing up in the focus groups, Mr. Speaker.
00:27:02.000That's the reason to start caring about it.
00:27:04.000Where does this race stand, and what does Trump need to do?
00:27:07.000What are two or three things he needs to do to win?
00:27:12.000Well, I always try to remind people that races are not Polaroid shots.
00:27:40.000And the people at Trafalgar, who were the most accurate people in both 2016 and 2018, will tell you that they routinely assume that Trump is at a minimum seven points stronger than the polls.
00:27:55.000And they believe, for example, right now, he is probably carrying Minnesota, carrying Wisconsin, carrying Michigan, and carrying Pennsylvania, which will not show up in the traditional polls.
00:29:11.000But anyway, my point is, I said back in January, Trump will win probably by a surprisingly big margin.
00:29:19.000They'll probably pick up two Senate seats.
00:29:22.000And there's a fair 50-50 chance that McCarthy will be the Speaker of the House.
00:29:26.000And people said, yeah, but tell me what you really think is going to happen.
00:29:30.000Well, I think Trump's going to win by a surprisingly big margin.
00:29:34.000We're going to pick up several U.S. Senate seats, and McCarthy has a 50-50 chance of being Speaker of the House.
00:29:39.000The reason I say that is the Democrats went out of their way to nominate the weirdest ticket since George McGovern.
00:29:47.000I mean, I just tell people, close your eyes and imagine the American president negotiating with General Secretary Xi Jinping, who is a really tough dictator in China.
00:29:59.000Now, would you rather have a tough guy who's a little rough around the edges, or would you like to have a commander-in-chief who falls asleep halfway through the meeting?
00:30:08.000You know, and I just think as people come to grips with realities, we move away from the summer, you know, what did the news media tell you you should think?
00:30:18.000And then, second, and I've written on this in my newsletters at Gingrich 360.
00:30:22.000I'm about to do another one where, and I'm also going to do a podcast where I'm taking all of Kamala Harris's really stupidest phrases, which is a lot.
00:30:30.000I mean, we have amazing stuff from her, including people are going to keep demonstrating and rioting all the way up to Election Day.
00:30:37.000Just get used to it, which in the context of what's now going on sounds really bad.
00:30:45.000So, I think that she is an absolute disaster.
00:30:50.000Remember, she was at 15% in July and was at 4% when she dropped out of the race.
00:30:56.000She was actually running fourth among African Americans.
00:30:59.000Biden had eight times as many black voters as she did.
00:31:03.000Why they picked her, I assume it's for Hollywood and Silicon Valley money.
00:31:09.000But I think by the time we get to the middle of October, this race will be a shambles and the Democrats will be in the process of collapsing.
00:31:22.000There's a growing movement in this country to embrace the president.
00:31:26.000I spent a lot of time in southern Wisconsin.
00:31:28.000It has been a 30-point swing, I can tell you, in people that used to be Democrats and Trump supporters.
00:31:34.000When you start to see neighborhoods you grew up in burned to the ground, all of a sudden you go to the pro-police law and order safety party.
00:31:41.000The book is Trump in the American Future, Solving the Great Problems of Our Time.
00:31:55.000You're clearly going to emerge as one of the great leaders of the next generation.
00:31:59.000And I'm delighted that you have the courage and the energy and the drive to stay out there and do all you can to help save the country.
00:32:06.000And I would just say to all of our listeners and viewers, this is all real.
00:32:10.000Right now, for the next 60 days, you have a chance to shape American history in a way that your children and grandchildren will thank you for.
00:32:18.000And I hope everybody who's listening will take seriously this opportunity to have a positive citizenship to offset those who would destroy and tear up things.
00:33:01.000Screenshot and email us at freedomatcharikirk.com if you guys want to win a signed copy of the New York Times bestseller, the MAGA Doctrine.