Why JD Vance is Far Ahead of 2028 GOP and Dem Contenders, and Newt Gingrich on Trump's Unique Appeal - Next Up with Mark Halperin
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 4 minutes
Words per Minute
179.57245
Summary
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich joins us to talk about his new book, Trump s Triumphs, and how he sees the landscape on both the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns in 2020 and beyond. Plus, Mark Halperin explains why it s too early to predict who s going to be the next Democratic presidential nominee.
Transcript
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Hey, everyone. It's Megan Kelly. Today, we're bringing you a full episode of our
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MK Media show, Next Up with Mark Halperin. Take a listen and go subscribe wherever you get your
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podcasts. Enjoy. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Next Up. Thank you for joining us for our
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10th episode. We're very happy and excited about building this community and delighted to have you
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back here or here for the first time, whether you're watching on YouTube or listening as a
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podcast. We're very grateful to you and hope you'll spread the word about Next Up. Like,
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subscribe, do all that stuff as this program continues to grow. Next up here will be House
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Speaker, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. He's written dozens of books. His new one is called
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Trump's Triumphs. He's one of the most interesting people in politics, and he's kept that status for
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several decades running. So we'll talk to Speaker Gingrich about his book, about Donald Trump,
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about how he sees the landscape on both the Democratic and Republican side, and couldn't
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be more delighted to talk to someone again who's one of the more interesting people I know.
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His story about Donald Trump's presidency is an intimate one because he's known Donald Trump a
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long time, and in 2015, he was very skeptical that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee.
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He saw others, including Jeb Bush, who was then the frontrunner, as stronger.
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We've seen surprises in presidential politics many times. In 2008, for instance, people said,
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well, no one predicted Barack Obama would be the Democratic nominee. Out of the blue,
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out of nowhere. Well, I have a different view, and I want to talk to you about 2028. Some people
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say it's too early to talk about the next presidential race. Well, I get paid to think
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about it all the time, but more to the point, I think there's some things going on now that we've
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never seen before, and I think they put the Republican Party in a very strong position. Doesn't mean
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they'll win in 2028, but I think on the current trajectory, there's some asymmetrical advantages
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for the Republican Party that are worth noting, even at this early stage, because I've never
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seen a presidential race shaping up like this, and I'll explain why. I look for asymmetrical
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advantages. Sometimes the parties are roughly equal on candidate quality or roughly equal on
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fundraising, but when there's a big difference, when one side has a decided advantage, it's worth
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noting. And in this case, there are a lot of asymmetrical advantages in the Trump-Vance era
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that benefit the Republicans. And it's hard at this point, as weak as the Democratic Party is,
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to find asymmetrical advantages that play in their favor. And so what I want to talk to you about is
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the challenge I see for the Democrats in making sure that as they get to late 2026, after the
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midterms and into the presidential year, that they've got a good chance to win. Because I think right now,
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again, on the current trajectory, they'll have a problem. 2028 will be a year, assuming Donald Trump
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serves at his full term, with no incumbent. And in the modern era, which I mark from when President
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Reagan was in office, we've had four cycles without an incumbent. 1988, 2000, 2008, and 2016.
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In all those cycles, we had a different dynamic. What we've never had before on either side
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is a vice president like J.D. Vance. Now, in three of those years, we did have vice presidents
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who were interested in running for president. George H.W. Bush in 88, Al Gore in 2000, and Joe
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Biden in 2016. Okay. And in those cases, those vice presidents did not receive overwhelming support
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from their presidential, from the president who they served with. It's a big deal, because
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presidents can put their thumb on the scale. This president can really put his thumb on the scale.
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If, as I expect, Donald Trump endorses J.D. Vance, that in Republican politics, since Trump became
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the king of the party, has been dispositive. It's rare for Trump to endorse a candidate who doesn't
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win. But it's more than just Trump's expected support. J.D. Vance has enormous advantages,
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because we've never seen a vice president like this. Presidents Bush and Gore and Biden were treated by
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the West Wing, by the president's aides, as people who should not be allowed to build their own
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political standing while they served as vice president. They wanted to. They were all ambitious.
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They all wanted to run for president. They knew that after two terms, assuming that ticket was
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reelected, they would want to run. So they wanted to do the kinds of things you do if you want to run
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for president. Become acquainted with all your party's top fundraisers. Meet people around the country who
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are activists. Become highly visible on important policy issues. Get along with the president and
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the president's team. Build a network of advisors who could help run a presidential campaign.
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Bush, Gore, and Biden were not allowed to do that. And when they tried, they were smacked down.
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One of the most remarkable things about the first few months of this administration
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is J.D. Vance has played his hand perfectly for setting himself up for 2028. He gets along with the
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president, with the cabinet, with the political advisors. He's made the top fundraiser for the
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Republican National Committee. That's never happened, to put someone like him, a vice president,
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in a position to interact regularly with the party's top donors. He's done it in Las Vegas. He's done it
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in New York. He's done it, I think, in a few other cities. And that's a huge advantage, to be able to say
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to the party, I'm the man, I'm the one. And to know all the people, to know the activists, the
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fundraisers, etc. He has a huge, huge leg up. And I think it's possible, and this would be
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unprecedented, that he doesn't have a serious nomination challenge at all, that no one runs
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against him, or no one of any significance. And he'll have all the advantages of four years, again,
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on this current trajectory, of setting everything up. And you look at how active he is on issues,
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on national security, how active he is on AI, on Doge, on the budget, on every issue that's
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important, on crypto. It's going to help him raise money, it's going to help him build connections,
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and it raises his profile within the party. If he doesn't have a nomination fight of any
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significance, it will make him less battle-tested. That's the one downside. He won't have the rigor
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building up the political muscles for fighting for the nomination. But the upside of that is,
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he can raise hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe billions, and put it all towards the
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general election. One guy raising all the Republican money, leveraging the power of the
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presidency and the vice presidency. Extraordinary advantage. What do we have on the other side?
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We've got a Democratic Party with, I think, a hugely overrated field. There's a lot of names on
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the list. I've seen lists of 20, 30 people who might run for the Democratic nomination. I'm sure
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not all of them will. But this is a bunch of very flawed candidates. I got nothing against them,
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and it's possible that one of them will emerge. But when people say, well, Bill Clinton emerged out
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of nowhere in 92, or Barack Obama out of nowhere in 2008, it's just not true. Both those guys were
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touted for many, many years as a future presidential candidate and a massive political talent. This
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current group, again, I don't want to be impolite to them, but they're flawed. There's no one on this
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list who I look at today and say they're the frontrunner. And in fact, I can't even make a cluster.
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I ask people all the time, who are the three most likely Democratic nominees? Which Democrats would
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be the strongest general election candidate? I get all sorts of names, no consensus. And that is
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unlike any cycle I've ever covered. Even when there's an open race for a party nomination,
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no incumbent president, there's always a sense of who are the most likely, who are the strongest.
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I look at these candidates and I see no political athlete of a generation. I see no one with the
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capacity to do the things you need to do with a huge advantage to get the nomination or to win a
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general, raise the money, announce policies, dominate the media, et cetera. They're a skilled group of
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people, but they're flawed. And again, I see no one who I would say is a clear frontrunner or even a
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pack. So to try to look on the optimistic side for the Democrats, I thought about what are the
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traits that would be needed to win a nomination and win a general. And the strongest candidates do
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both at the same time. They run for the nomination on the same message they run for in the general.
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They use the same skills, the same team, et cetera. So I looked at the Democratic field and I said,
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could I build a Frankenstein? Could I take a trait from all the leading candidates or many of the
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leading candidates and say, well, that's good. If the eventual nominee could have that trait from
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that person and build a cluster of great skills, well, maybe that's the way to do it. So here's
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my Frankenstein candidate drawn from some of the leading Democratic figures who may run. Some of
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these people may not run. But this is what, talking to Democratic strategists, I hear, these are the
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kinds of things they think they're going to need to run against J.D. Vance. If it's him, maybe fate will
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intervene, it'll be somebody else. But what do the Democrats need? So first I start with Pete
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Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary, mayor of South Bend. He has a really important
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skill that Donald Trump has, what I call go on anything confidence. Pete Buttigieg can go on a
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sports show. He can go on a podcast. He can go on Fox. He can go on conservative media. That confidence
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to be able to go anywhere is something Donald Trump had in 2016. He went on MSNBC. He went on sports
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shows. And of course, in 2024, he went on a range of podcasts. So Pete Buttigieg has what I call the
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go on anything confidence that would be part of the Frankenstein. Second, California Governor Gavin
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Newsom. What does he have? He has a search for what's modern and an understanding. He is not tied
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to the past in terms of culture, society, technology, politics. He's always thinking, underrated for this,
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always thinking about the future, about what's modern, what's next, what are younger people,
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what are Americans who are just tuning into politics, what do they care about, what do they
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think about? That understanding of what's modern is a huge trait, which again, the Democrat nominee
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is going to need. Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan, what does she bring to the table?
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She understands swing voters in battleground states. She's a popular governor in one of the biggest
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battleground states, one of the most important. And she has been pretty consistently popular in her
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state during rough times by understanding where those voters are. She understands they care about
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economics. She understands to stay on the right side of cultural issues. Massive advantage. And
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again, not every Democrat has that, particularly the ones who do not come from purple states.
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Rahm Emanuel, former congressman, White House chief of staff, mayor of Chicago, U.S. ambassador to Japan.
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What does he bring to the table? Fundraising capacity. I mentioned before, J.D. Vance is going to be a
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monster fundraiser. He's going to raise hundreds of millions, maybe billions, and maybe be able to
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devote that all to a general election. Rahm Emanuel knows how to raise money. He did it for Bill Clinton
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back in 1992. He can raise money from his brother, Ari Emanuel, the Hollywood super agent. He knows all
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the rich Democrats in the country. Hugely important, huge factor to be able to raise enough money,
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particularly in a big crowded Democratic field, in order to fund a campaign. Amy Klobuchar,
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senator from Minnesota. She ran for president before in 2020. She's got something that I think
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is lacking a little bit. You saw my interview on Next Up with Gavin Newsom. Ambivalence. Too many of
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these Democrats aren't sure they want to be president. Amy Klobuchar is determined. She has the
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determination. If she does decide to run, she will do what I think you need to do to win. You got to get
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up every morning and say, what are the 10 things I need to do today to win the presidency? And then you have
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to do them. And you have to do them with a fierce determination. I'll tell you again, part of why
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this field's underrated. You got a lot of younger folks with young kids. You got people who've never
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run before and have no idea what's involved truly in running for president. Amy Klobuchar has that
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determination. That's an important trait. Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania, extremely popular.
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People have raised questions of late about him. I thought he might be the front runner,
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governor. But people in Harrisburg and in Washington elsewhere have raised questions about his ability
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to deal with controversy, his willingness to hire strong people to staff around him. You got to deal
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with both those things if you're going to be a successful presidential candidate. But what he has is the
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capacity to do two things at once. Mario Cuomo, the former New York governor, said, you campaign in poetry,
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but you govern in prose. I think what Governor Shapiro has, which any Democrat would be smart to emulate,
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is he does both. He governs in both poetry and prose. He's very detail-oriented. He works hard at
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being a good governor in terms of policy and process, but he also understands you got to be
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inspirational and aspirational. And again, that's a trait that's going to be needed whoever runs for
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president and wins on the Democratic side. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York,
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not sure she'll run, but she has the it factor. She's interesting to people. When she talks,
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she passes my mute button test. If you see her on TV, you got the mute button on or your computer's
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on mute. You turn it up. You want to hear what she has to say. Let's be honest. A lot of these
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other Democrats are pretty boring. People are not compelled to hear what they have to say. AOC has
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that it factor. All right. Gina Raimondo, she was Biden's Commerce Secretary, President Biden's
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Commerce Secretary, former governor of Rhode Island, not as well-known as some of the others.
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But I'll tell you where she is well-known, well-liked, and well-respected is in the business
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community. This has become a huge asymmetrical advantage for the Republicans. A lot of business
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leaders have turned towards the Republican Party. They've always been part of the Republican
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coalition. But the Biden record on economics in particular really turned a lot of Democrats,
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business leaders off. Raimondo is seen as a pro-business Democrat. She can raise money from
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them. She can speak their language. She can get their support. Hugely important. And again,
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part of the Frankenstein candidate. If you're the Democrats, you want someone who can speak the
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language of business. Ro Khanna, congressman from California, understands policy and how to connect
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it up to the real lives of real people. You'd think anybody running for president would do this.
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But the Democratic Party has gone for several decades now without energized, without getting
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through new policies that really appeal to people in a basic sense. Generating those ideas by thinking
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by talking to real voters and thinking about what they want is something most of these candidates
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do not do. Even a lot of the governors. Ro Khanna understands you need policies that appeal to people
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that can be explained easily. Lastly, Wes Moore, governor of Maryland. He's said he's not going to run,
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but some people doubt that. But I'll tell you what he brings to the Frankenstein table is an origin story,
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a biography. He grew up in a humble background. He served in the military. He was the head of a
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nonprofit that helps disadvantaged people. Having an origin story that you say to the American people,
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here's my life. It doesn't have to be humble background. Donald Trump, George Bush, hardly
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humble background. But you need a story to say, here's where I've been. Here's what I've done.
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Here's what I've experienced. This is why I think I should be president. These are the ideas that I have.
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Wes Moore brings that origin story, that strong bio to the table. It's incredibly important to have
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these things. Now, I will say, who wasn't on my list? Kamala Harris. I looked, I thought long and
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hard, what are the traits Kamala Harris has as a strong candidate? Bring to the table. Name ID,
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something you don't necessarily get from most of these other candidates. But that puts in sharp
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relief the challenge I think the Democrats have. Even their more experienced candidates, even the ones who
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understand more of what it takes to win a nomination and win a general election, they do not have the
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complete package. Vance's flaw, J.D. Vance is not a perfect candidate, but the asymmetrical advantages
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he has if he gets Donald Trump's endorsement, if he executes on money and policy and communication
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and building a center-right coalition will make him very formidable. These Democrats are flawed. You
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could run through all the ones I said listed their positive traits and list five or six negative ones
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that make it seem unlikely that they would win the nomination or win a general election. I will make
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this prediction. Someone's going to be the Democratic nominee. And unless someone emerges that I haven't
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thought of, it's going to be someone pretty flawed. But what Democrats say to me who have run and won
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presidential campaigns is whoever the nominee is needs to study the best of their colleagues, the ability
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to do the various things that these 10 folks have and try to figure out a winning way to compete.
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Because before too long, it's going to be 2027, 2028. And on this trajectory, as I've said, J.D. Vance has an
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extraordinary set of asymmetrical advantages. And if the Democrats want to win back the White House,
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they're going to have to figure out how to build that Frankenstein, not in the lab, but by having at least
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one of their candidates rise to the occasion. All right, we'll keep following that. Next up, my conversation with
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the former House Speaker, Nick Gingrich, right after this.
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All right, next up, the former Speaker of the House, someone who's been on the national stage for a very
00:18:40.380
long time, has written a lot of books, but never gets old because his mind is as agile as it's always
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been. Newt Gingrich, thank you for joining next up. Delighted to be with you, as always.
00:18:53.260
All right. So you've written a lot of books. The newest one is called Trump's Triumph. You've got
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lots to do with your time these days. Why did you spend time writing a book about Donald Trump?
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Well, it's actually about both Trump and the subtitle is America's Greatest Comeback. And in October,
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we sat down and thought about, I have a team that I work with, particularly Louis Brogdon
00:19:14.900
and Joe Gaylord. And, you know, we were confident we were going to win. And we thought, first of all,
00:19:22.080
it's an astonishing story, as you know, to come down the escalator in 15, win, lose, win.
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Second, I was pretty convinced because I'd been working with the America First Policy Institute
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that Trump was going to be dramatically bolder than he was in his first term and that it would be bold
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in a general direction that would be the first real challenge to the Rooseveltian system since it
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was established by FDR in 1933. So I wanted to put a historic perspective on what we're about to live
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through and to both say in sort of part one, here's how we got here, which is Trump's triumph.
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But also, here's where America wants to go and what the American people are saying and why they
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stuck with him through everything. I mean, you know, two impeachments, four efforts to put him
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in jail, two assassination attempts. You know, he's the only candidate in history who knocked the
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incumbent president out of the race by June, pivoted and then defeated the incumbent vice president.
00:20:26.300
So something was there that was bigger than personality. As charismatic and as effective
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as Trump is, if he didn't actually have a MAGA movement, he would not have survived. So I think
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it's a combination of the movement and the man and where will they take us?
00:20:43.760
I want to talk first about the man and then the movement. You've known Donald Trump for a long time,
00:20:48.440
but you've known him, tell me if I'm wrong, but I think I'm right. You've got to know him much
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better over the last decade than you did before. Yeah, I mean, I sort of generally knew him and we
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actually joined Trump National shortly after he took it over. And we would see him there back before
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he was a candidate. In fact, he used to feed Callista french fries, which was mildly weird,
00:21:08.620
sitting around at lunch. But our first real political conversation was February of 2015 in a
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place you've been often, the downtown Marriott in Des Moines. We were there for a conference
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that on national security, Trump was there. And he called and said, hey, we're in the same hotel,
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why don't we do breakfast? So he and Callista and I got together and he would watch me run
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for president in 12. And even though I'd failed, he understood that I knew a little bit about
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presidential campaigns. So we talked candidly about what would it take to run? It was the first time I
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really began to realize that he would be moved beyond the amusing interview stage towards seriously
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plotting a campaign. And I've watched him ever since. Yeah, you know him better than I do. But
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to the extent I know him, I find the gap between what he's actually like and how he's portrayed in
00:22:04.760
the media to be as big as almost anyone I've ever covered. I'm wondering how you can describe
00:22:09.600
things about Donald Trump, particular traits or big themes that you think are not fully portrayed for
00:22:15.480
the American people. Well, I mean, let me say, I think that the closest analogy to Trump is Andrew
00:22:21.840
Jackson. And when Jackson took on the entire national establishment, he infuriated them so
00:22:27.680
much. And that included all the academic elites. He did not get a good biography till 1955 because he
00:22:36.300
was just anathema. Trump has some of that same characteristic. He is such a mortal threat to the
00:22:43.400
elites, both at the New York Times and the Washington Post and Harvard, that they just
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can't, they can't bring themselves to cover the person because they're so angry at what they perceive
00:22:54.660
that he's doing. I find him to be, first of all, stunningly smart. I mean, I think I'm reasonably
00:23:03.900
smart. I have no doubt that he is much smarter than I am. Okay, let's, I want to interrupt you and dwell on
00:23:09.300
that one for a second, because I'm not sure he's smarter than you are. You might be able to be a
00:23:13.480
little bit self-effacing. You're a very smart person, but there's no doubt you put your finger
00:23:17.460
on something. You could read every New York Times or Washington Post story ever written about Donald
00:23:21.540
Trump, and not one will say he's very smart, but he is. So just talk more about, there's different
00:23:26.680
kinds of intelligence. How is he smart? Well, he's smart at three or four levels, some of which I just
00:23:32.500
literally don't have. One is, he's essentially intuitive. That is, he absorbs an enormous amount
00:23:38.020
of information. He is the most existential politician I've ever seen. I mean, Nelson Mandela
00:23:44.520
would be probably the closest parallel. Everything Trump does is in the moment. He is totally engaged,
00:23:51.860
totally involved, and he's sort of schizophrenic in that part of him is thinking strategically,
00:23:56.660
while the other part is totally engaged with you. And so he absorbs stuff, and he's absorbing stuff
00:24:04.600
all the time. I mean, when occasionally I have a conversation with him, I realize that there are
00:24:10.680
three or four conversations going on simultaneously in one conversation, because he's thinking about
00:24:15.760
this, and then he's overthinking about that, and things just flow. He is... Let me just stop you
00:24:22.800
there, because I just want to put a button on this, because it's so important. One way he's intelligent,
00:24:27.020
you're saying, is he has the capacity to think in the moment, talk in the moment, but be thinking
00:24:32.660
about other things, and kind of connecting them all up and processing them. Sorry, go ahead, second.
00:24:36.960
And I think somewhere, and you know, I think unless you, and you understand this even better than I do,
00:24:42.160
because you're a New Yorker, and you went to school in Boston, which I picked up the other day,
00:24:47.480
I thought was great. You know, moving from, people don't get this, moving from Queens to Manhattan
00:24:55.580
is impossible. Nobody in the Manhattan elites is going to accept some newcomer from Queens who's
00:25:04.100
brash and loud and rising. And so he spent his entire formative years being an outsider and wanting
00:25:12.560
to be an insider, and I think finally concluding he ain't ever going to be an insider. So he would just
00:25:17.960
get to be so big, they would like to be inside with him. And I think there's a very key part of what
00:25:23.420
drives him, is that... How does that speak to intelligence? Because I want to stay on that. Does that speak
00:25:27.640
to intelligence? Yeah, because think about it. He had to sharpen all of his skills, whatever he thought
00:25:33.020
he knew coming out of Queens. He had to learn a whole new world, a whole new system. He describes some of this
00:25:38.460
in his two best books, The Art of the Deal and The Art of the Comeback. And there's one line when he says
00:25:43.580
that he was going to redo the building, which I think is Trump Tower, and they were going to try to
00:25:49.480
keep the Art Deco front, and the New York Times loved it and was nice to him, until the engineer said
00:25:54.340
that's $3 million extra, at which point Trump said he didn't like the Art Deco that much, at which point
00:26:00.080
the New York Times attacked him for three straight days. Well, he said the lesson he learned was he had lots
00:26:05.460
of people suddenly call him and say, I didn't know you were doing condominiums. And his conclusion
00:26:10.560
was, any media beats no media. And bad media is better than no media. And part of it is, and this
00:26:19.100
is what I mean by his intelligence, not only does he learn from you and me face to face, or on the
00:26:24.560
telephone or whatever, but in the back of his head, he's building models. He had to build a model of
00:26:30.200
Queens kid, millionaire in Manhattan. And that was a model. This is how it works. So he's constantly
00:26:37.360
looking. I mean, I'm sure right now, for example, with Putin, that he's very troubled. And every
00:26:43.320
model he had for how it was going to work has failed. And he is grudgingly moving towards a level
00:26:48.900
of toughness that will shock Putin. Because Putin is mistaking patience for timidity. And I've seen this
00:26:57.820
over and over again. The other part of that, and I don't know whether it relates to intelligence,
00:27:02.040
he is as much of an alpha male as anyone I've ever seen. I mean, you take, and this is what Harvard's
00:27:07.760
learning, you take him head on, he will be compelled as an act of survival to take you apart.
00:27:17.300
The way I think that that speaks to intelligence, and I'm going to give you a few others to comment
00:27:21.320
on that I see, is he knows how to leverage advantages. He knows what advantages he has. He knows being an
00:27:27.280
alpha is an advantage in most situations. And he sizes up and knows how to leverage it.
00:27:31.600
Well, he doesn't just know how to leverage. He thinks ahead and understands that there are five
00:27:35.540
or six different points going. So very often I find I'll be on point three and he's on point 11.
00:27:42.580
Right. I'll give you three others. And you can just say, yes, Mark, you're right. Or you can say
00:27:47.080
I'm wrong. Or you can just comment on them. One is his ability to size up people is as good as
00:27:51.680
anybody I've ever seen. He understands what motivates them. He understands how he can get what he wants
00:27:57.260
from them. Two is he understands the media as well as any politician I've ever covered.
00:28:02.300
You're pretty sophisticated about the media. Barack Obama is, he's as sophisticated about
00:28:07.260
as anybody I've ever met who's been in elective office. He does not have a blind spot about the
00:28:11.900
media the way Bill Clinton did, for instance. And then lastly is he gets politics. He gets what
00:28:17.280
the traffic will bear on an issue. How far can he go within the Republican Party to lean towards
00:28:22.700
being more pro life on a pro choice on abortion? How far can he go on on dealing with Canada? He
00:28:29.660
just he just understands what the traffic will bear. Well, and remember, all of that's intuitive.
00:28:34.800
Yeah. Although as long as we're in this conversation about the media, can you explain to me his
00:28:39.820
fascination with Maggie Haberman? I can, but I won't. I part of it's the New York Times. But part of it is
00:28:47.720
she pushes his buttons and she, he wants, he wants her, her, his, her approval so badly, but I can't
00:28:53.400
fully explain it. The three of us, the three of us. I don't know if he wants her approval or her
00:28:58.080
attention, but that's the, that's the funniest single dance. Yeah. I see him doing the media.
00:29:03.720
Yeah. It's a pretty funny one. Josh Dawsey of the, now of the Wall Street Journal is someone else who
00:29:08.140
he's pretty focused on, I'm told, but, but Maggie Haberman of the Times, second to none. And I'll just say
00:29:13.620
to button up the thing about Trump's intelligence. One of the, one of the, to me, one of the stories
00:29:18.420
of Trump's success in the last decade is he's constantly underestimated. And, and you benefited
00:29:24.000
from that at times too. People, his opponents underestimate, say, well, Gingrich, you know,
00:29:29.220
is too far right, or Gingrich doesn't understand this or that. And it allowed you to succeed.
00:29:34.260
People, when I tell people Trump's smart, and I've told, I've said to people I know who are quite smart,
00:29:39.280
you don't understand. Trump's smarter than you. You're very smart, I'll say to them,
00:29:43.020
but Trump's smarter than you. And, and I've lost friends over saying that to them. And, and,
00:29:47.540
and, and they just, they, they just, they should accept the fact that they don't know him and
00:29:52.340
they'll have a better chance of beating him if they, if they deal with him on the terms of reality,
00:29:57.040
which is he's a really smart guy. You know, I mean, in many ways, he's parallel to Eisenhower and
00:30:01.880
Reagan, both of whom consciously underplayed how really good they were. Yeah. Because they thought it
00:30:09.700
was a net advantage. Yeah. And I, and I think part of Trump's vaudevillian approach,
00:30:14.900
and he's, he's clearly a vaudeville performer. And part of that, I think, is a deliberate,
00:30:19.880
how can you really be afraid of me? I'm just this funny guy. Yeah. And when watching him take
00:30:26.280
apart Jeb Bush psychologically was one of the master classes in how really clever Donald Trump is.
00:30:32.920
Yep. Absolutely. All right. You mentioned President Reagan. I often think, what would
00:30:38.420
Thomas Jefferson think of my iPhone? You know, if you, if you had time with Jefferson, you showed
00:30:43.980
him the iPhone, what would he think? What would Reagan think of Trump? They knew each other when
00:30:48.520
President Reagan was alive, but what would he think of Trump being a two-term president?
00:30:53.460
That's a, boy, that is a great question. I mean, I knew Reagan reasonably well and began working
00:31:02.560
with him in 74. I think, I mean, Reagan was as much a realist as Trump. And people forget he
00:31:09.900
led the only strike by the Screen Actors Guild and was successful. He conscious, I mean, he was,
00:31:18.080
he was amazing. He was more deliberative than Trump, more structured, I would say, than Trump.
00:31:25.060
But I think Reagan would say, looking at all this, two things. One is that Trump has an enormous set
00:31:31.600
of skills that make him uniquely formidable as a president or a candidate. And the other is that
00:31:40.140
his opponents are just idiots. I mean, I think, I think Reagan would have said, you know, you give
00:31:45.460
me Hillary Clinton, having run against Mondale and Carter, you give me Hillary Clinton, and then you
00:31:50.320
follow it up with Joe Biden and Barack, and with Kamala Harris. He said, I wouldn't be too shocked
00:32:00.080
Yeah. Let me ask you the Reagan question in a slightly different way. There's only been two
00:32:03.720
Republican presidents between Reagan and Trump, which is kind of incredible given the gap, both
00:32:08.680
Bushes. And you and I both know what the Bush family thinks of Donald Trump. They think he's a
00:32:13.220
Philistine who has destroyed the Republican Party and has no business being president. Would Reagan
00:32:18.400
say that? Would Reagan say, I hate what Trump has done to the party? Or would he embrace what Trump
00:32:22.660
has done to the party? That's what the Bushes would have said about Reagan if they could have gotten
00:32:25.400
away with it. I don't know if 43 would have said that. Maybe 40. Oh, yeah. No. George Schultz used
00:32:31.160
to say that H.W. Bush eliminated every Reaganite in the first week. Well, but Bush 43 spoke fondly of
00:32:41.980
Reagan. He did. Oh, sure. Maybe you don't think he meant it. But what would Ronald Reagan say
00:32:47.160
about a guy who, I know this is your view because I've heard you say it, he's changed the party
00:32:52.060
fundamentally. He's moved the party from being a conservative party to being an anti-liberal party.
00:32:56.260
But what would Reagan say about the impact Donald Trump has had on the Republican Party? Would he
00:33:02.120
embrace it? Or would he have mixed feelings? Or would he be like the Bushes? I mean, first of all,
00:33:06.200
I think there's the, they lived in two very different worlds. Yeah. And I think that's a
00:33:11.680
big part of where we are. The left had to, the left had to take us off a deep cliff to make sense
00:33:17.540
out of, out of Trump. I would say Reagan, who had after all given 480 speeches to blue collar workers
00:33:26.720
for General Electric over an eight year period. I think Reagan would say it's pretty impressive
00:33:32.980
to finally have a Republican who actually understands and is part of a blue collar movement.
00:33:40.520
Yeah. Again, Reagan was an FDR Democrat. Yeah. Just as Trump was a Democrat. I mean,
00:33:45.700
these guys had a lot they could compare notes on. Yeah. I don't know if you, I don't know if you
00:33:49.220
could quantify it, but it appears to me that Trump has moved the Republican Party to be more of a
00:33:55.300
working class party than even Reagan did. Much more. And Reagan, and Reagan was famous for having
00:34:00.120
created the Reagan Democrats and, and changing the image of the party. So I would think that
00:34:04.560
perhaps Reagan would look in awe, respect, whatever to say, wow, this guy, this guy from New York has
00:34:11.040
moved it. I think Reagan would have said that what we did with the contract was standing on his
00:34:16.120
shoulders, which it was. And that what Trump has done is the natural extension. I mean, it only
00:34:22.300
occurred to me in the last couple of days, you really can't just talk about Biden. What you have
00:34:26.940
is an Obama Biden continuum, which took the country into a series of divisive and destructive patterns,
00:34:33.560
which suddenly made Trump seem reasonable. If you were a blue collar American. Yeah. And so I think
00:34:41.320
Reagan would have said, given the trajectory starting with Obama, Trump is a perfectly natural reaction.
00:34:48.400
And it is terrific that he can communicate with and rally working Americans of every ethnic
00:34:54.520
background. I mean, he, his ethnic reach is astonishing. Yeah. I want to talk more about
00:34:58.920
that, but I want to button up on, on the history and then get to the present regarding the cultural
00:35:03.160
changes in particular. No one, as far as I know, has written the comprehensive book when, about the
00:35:09.880
following topic. You and I both say, and we're not the only ones, Trump didn't create the movement.
00:35:14.740
He saw that it was there and he seized it. He got to the front of the parade and not diminishing the
00:35:19.080
accomplishment, but the movement was there. And I look at the movement. And again, I go back to
00:35:23.480
Reagan, because I think that's when the modern history of all these things began. I see Reagan.
00:35:28.000
I see you. I see Pat Buchanan as three people who are part of the through line that led to Trump,
00:35:35.400
not on the negative side, as you said, in reacting to Democrats. Who are the other people besides
00:35:39.320
Pat Buchanan and Reagan and yourself, you'd put on that list? He's sort of forgotten now,
00:35:44.740
but I actually think Goldwater was very formative. I mean, yeah, number of young people who read
00:35:49.580
conscience of a conservative and suddenly said, that's right. That's, that's real. That's how
00:35:55.460
the world should. I mean, he had an astonishing impact in creating a party which would nominate
00:36:00.420
Nixon in 68. And Reagan's, as you know, Reagan's speech for Goldwater, which people can watch on
00:36:06.340
YouTube as a time for choosing, is still, you can watch it today and it's totally relevant. I mean,
00:36:12.420
Reagan was talking about universal truths that don't disappear. And I think a lot of what Trump
00:36:18.880
tried to do, has tried to do, is pick up on a similar pattern. Trump is a deeply American patriot.
00:36:24.980
Trump is for the work ethic. Trump is for meritocracy, knowing that it drives the left crazy.
00:36:30.800
And Trump is for normal people. I mean, the moment when he went to McDonald's to give out French
00:36:36.440
fries and then got into the garbage truck, putting on a garbage collector's vest and walks into the
00:36:42.500
arena with 50,000 people and says, you know, they tell me the vest makes me look thinner. Maybe I'll
00:36:47.000
wear it for the rest of the campaign. That is an identification Reagan would totally have
00:36:51.320
approved of. Now, Reagan was a movie star. I mean, Reagan was never, I mean, he may have been back
00:36:56.740
in Illinois or at WHO in Des Moines. But by the time Reagan had become president, he was a movie
00:37:02.720
star. He was part of the great national elite. But he represented and could communicate with
00:37:08.940
an amazing range of Americans. And I think he would say that, and Nancy used to feel very much
00:37:16.640
that she was treated by Washington much the way Trump is. I mean, she was fairly bitter
00:37:22.340
about some of the treatment that she took. Yeah. Is there anyone else, I take your point on
00:37:27.280
Goldwater, is there anyone else from the 90s, the aughts or the teens pre-Trump who you would say
00:37:32.140
belongs in a history of the MAGA movement as being someone who popularized its ideas, who generated
00:37:39.140
ideas, who played on the national stage? I mean, one of the amazing, relatively unknown figures is
00:37:46.060
Grover Norquist. Yeah, I agree. The degree to which Grover and Americans for Tax Reform
00:37:51.200
has spread the no tax increase pledge, the degree to which you just saw it in action when there was
00:37:59.400
a rumor floated about the possibility of raising taxes on billionaires. And people came down hard
00:38:05.100
and said, no, we are not the party that raises taxes, which, of course, was the great fight
00:38:09.440
with George H.W. Bush. I mean, Grover has been one of the seminal figures in the modern
00:38:16.440
conservative. By the way, the other person who, this may get her in trouble, but if you look at
00:38:22.900
Brooke Rollins from the creation of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is now, I guess,
00:38:28.820
25 years ago, up through the Americans for the America First Policy Institute, she assembled and
00:38:36.040
directed a collection of people who laid the base intellectually for what Trump has done in the
00:38:43.620
second term and who understood bridging a conservative movement into, and you're exactly
00:38:51.820
right, Trump is not essentially a conservative. He doesn't read National Review, which, of course,
00:38:56.340
drives the National View editors crazy. But Trump is the most effective anti-liberal in my lifetime.
00:39:03.160
Yeah. You mentioned Grover Norquist, and I think it's a great addition to my list. He's a Washington
00:39:07.920
organizer. He's not very well known outside of Washington. But I'll tell you two things that I
00:39:13.420
think Grover did that are antecedents to Trump, besides holding the line on taxes, tax increases.
00:39:20.040
One is, he was one of the first people who made owning the libs a thing, right? Being anti-liberal as
00:39:28.680
a unifying organizing principle, being against universities, being against the media, being
00:39:33.200
against woke corporatism. And Trump inherited the energy of that. The other thing Grover did,
00:39:39.220
and Grover's famous, he holds a Wednesday meeting in Washington with groups. And I used to have the
00:39:43.740
privilege as a reporter of attending off the record. It's the biggest tent you can imagine.
00:39:48.220
There are people there who care about abortion, right? Right to life. There are people who care
00:39:52.380
about taxes. There are people who care about regulation. There are people who care about
00:39:56.000
gun Second Amendment rights. And Grover taught them, we got to be a big tent. You may be from a
00:40:01.340
Second Amendment group, but if we want to rename Washington's airport after Ronald Reagan,
00:40:05.920
you're going to be part of that coalition. And that's, I think, what Trump did extremely effectively.
00:40:10.860
Well, the other thing I would say is you cannot describe the rise of modern conservatism
00:40:16.200
without three people, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Roger Ailes. I mean, the degree to which they
00:40:24.160
are, they unified an entire nationwide movement, educated, in the case of Ailes, built an entire
00:40:31.940
network for it, created a frame of, and again, if you listen to them, they're much more anti-left-wing
00:40:39.940
stupidity than they are doctrinaire conservatives. Yeah. But their collective impact, I mean,
00:40:46.300
Rush and Sean, in terms of the scale of their audience, and Roger, in terms of the scale of
00:40:50.100
the institution he built, they were a major counterbalance to the traditional media.
00:40:56.420
No doubt. And only one of those three is still alive, Sean. And those who don't listen to Sean to
00:41:01.700
understand Trump are making a mistake. The reason those guys have an affinity is for the very reason
00:41:06.180
you said, which is they are part of that same understanding of how to communicate that Trump
00:41:11.840
took advantage of. Less doctrinaire conservative, less here are my 82 ideas, and more we need
00:41:18.620
fundamental change because there's too much going on on the left that's being rejected by working
00:41:22.500
class people. And by the way, in Sean's case, I think he's known Trump for 30 years. Yeah. I mean,
00:41:27.580
it's a genuine social friendly, you know, they can talk for an hour, an hour and a half because
00:41:32.060
they're New Yorkers and they understand the rhythm of each other. Yeah. They end almost every sentence
00:41:38.160
with forget about it. We're going to take a little bit of a break, Mr. Speaker. And when we come back,
00:41:43.000
we're going to talk more about Trump's triumph, Speaker Gingrich's 111th book, and about woke culture
00:41:48.840
after this brief break. Now, let me tell you a story about a guy named Leo Grillo. While on a road
00:41:57.380
trip, Leo came across a Doberman, this dog was severely underweight and clearly in a lot of
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DeltaRescue.org today to learn more. Again, that's DeltaRescue.org.
00:43:10.360
All right, more next up with Beaker Gingrich. Newt Gingrich has written a new book,
00:43:14.080
Trump's triumph, and it is not just, as he said, a history of Donald Trump, but also of the movement
00:43:22.920
and what's going on in America now. Who should buy this book, Mr. Speaker? Who's it intended for?
00:43:30.660
I think it's really aimed at any citizen who wants a sense of how do we get here and where could we
00:43:36.680
possibly go from here? And I think it's the combination of the book. America's greatest
00:43:41.200
achievement part really launches into the next 50 years. And of course, Trump's triumph was the last
00:43:47.700
unique cycle going back to 2015. So I tried to have both a, you know, before looking back and
00:43:55.800
looking forward in the same book. I said earlier in the program, my thesis, that we've never seen
00:44:01.500
an incumbent vice president in the modern era, again, since Reagan, with the advantages that
00:44:06.780
that Vice President Vance has, and that that puts him on the current trajectory on a path to
00:44:12.400
nomination if he chooses to, that could be almost effortless to win the nomination. I'm wondering
00:44:18.640
what your analysis is of his, of how well positioned he is right now with the president, with the White
00:44:24.660
House, with activists, donors, et cetera, if he chooses to run for the nomination.
00:44:28.760
Well, if Trump is a success, remember this is, I always tell the Trump team that they've won a ticket
00:44:34.660
to the dance, but now they've got to dance. If Trump is a success, I think it's almost inevitable
00:44:41.220
that Vance will become the presidential nominee. I watched the two of them, Cliff and I watched on
00:44:48.380
TV, the two of them at the National Cemetery on Memorial Day. And, you know, realizing that J.D.
00:44:56.460
Vance is one year younger than Richard Nixon was when Eisenhower picked him. I mean, so he's a very
00:45:02.880
young vice president. He's almost in the Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy range.
00:45:09.920
And he's been very smart. I mean, you know, when they had the announcement a couple weeks ago,
00:45:13.940
oh, he's going to be the national finance chairman for the Republican National Committee.
00:45:18.740
Well, he'll know every major Republican donor in the country by sometime early next year.
00:45:25.540
Now, you combine standing next to Trump, the natural news coverage, you know, visiting the last
00:45:32.440
pope, visiting the new pope, making major speeches that really do matter, which he has done.
00:45:40.560
It's very hard for me to see, if he wants it, how he avoids becoming the Republican nominee. And then
00:45:46.020
the question will be, I think the only question for 26 and 28 is really simple. Is it working?
00:45:53.920
Whatever it is. If it's working, we're going to keep the House in 26 and we're going to elect J.D.
00:45:59.580
Vance president in 28. Assuming it stays on this trajectory and it's working well enough,
00:46:04.500
at least for Republicans, can you name either the person or the type of person who would challenge J.D.
00:46:10.380
Vance for the nomination? Well, look, it's a free country. I mean, there are a lot of governors,
00:46:15.220
there are a lot of senators, there are a lot of billionaires. I mean, you know, you are allowed
00:46:19.300
to come and play. You're just not guaranteed to win. I discovered that in 2012 when I did pretty
00:46:25.420
well until I ran into Romney's millions and learned that it's a game for big boys. It's not, you know,
00:46:30.500
it's not. But is the opening potentially someone to his right, to his left, anti-establishment?
00:46:36.680
I have no idea how that, I mean, because he is going to be, it's beyond MAGA.
00:46:45.220
If we are succeeding, J.D. Vance will be the articulator and the co-manager. I mean,
00:46:54.880
he's done a great job, for example, in the Senate, getting the cabinet through because
00:46:58.680
he could go back to his senatorial colleagues. He's done a very good job so far representing
00:47:04.180
America overseas. He did a great job on Memorial Day just standing next to the president at Arlington.
00:47:10.360
I mean, you watch, you look at that picture and you think to yourself, what's the wedge somebody's
00:47:17.120
going to try to drive? And I don't see how they do it. I mean, everybody's allowed to run and
00:47:21.920
every professional consultant in the country will have some plausible explanation of why you should
00:47:27.240
hire them. But I mean, from my standpoint as a historian, look, I was for Jack Kemp against George
00:47:34.280
H.W. Bush in 1988. And I learned the power of having stood next to Reagan. Because inside your
00:47:43.100
own party, it may be harder in the general, but inside your own party, it's very hard to beat a
00:47:49.020
vice president. Yeah. And Bush 41 had nothing like the support of President Reagan that Donald Trump's
00:47:54.400
likely to give J.D. Vance. If the RNC said, we want to do deep opposition research and prepare
00:48:01.740
for three Democrats who are most likely to be the Democratic nominee for president,
00:48:06.880
who would you tell them to prepare for? Which three? I haven't got a clue. I mean. Because they
00:48:12.680
all look weak? Well, because now you're talking about winning a nomination. Yeah.
00:48:19.040
Yeah. Look, I mean, at one level, you have to say, and I just did Newsom's podcast, so I have to be
00:48:24.860
nice to him. I mean, and he's very, very smart. I mean, he's very agile. He's also very shallow and
00:48:31.260
has to carry California on his back. And that may be by itself prohibitive. But if you have the
00:48:38.760
largest state in the country and the kind of fundraising that the San Francisco mafia can do,
00:48:43.760
he has to be considered a serious candidate. For the life of me, I don't understand Pritzker.
00:48:49.040
I can't admit it. But he has so much money. He apparently was pretty effective in New Hampshire.
00:48:55.020
I think the governor, Whitmer, of Michigan is the most attractive of the Democrats, just in terms of
00:49:00.980
fitting a series of different boxes. And I think the governor of Pennsylvania is probably the smartest
00:49:05.240
of them. But again, but he's Shapiro. And can a Jewish governor of Pennsylvania really find love
00:49:12.680
in the Democratic primary? And I'm not sure. Okay. I just want to ask you about one thing
00:49:18.160
respectfully. You've been on Governor Newsom's show. He's been on my show. You said he's shallow.
00:49:23.540
And I know that's a common view. But I'm wondering what you base that on, because I don't think he is.
00:49:31.880
Yeah. Agile sounds more positive than shallow to me.
00:49:36.800
I meant it in the sense that he's able to constantly move. He wrote a book, which I actually
00:49:42.100
touted, Citizenville, which I think is a very good book. And what puzzles me about Newsom is,
00:49:49.460
to your point, where you're right, and I didn't say it very well, Newsom has the potential to be
00:49:55.340
very serious, very thoughtful, and very real. He avoids that, partially because it doesn't pay in
00:50:01.800
Sacramento, to actually think through how bad Sacramento is. And that's what I meant. He is a
00:50:07.140
guy who has the potential to go deep. He consciously stays on the surface.
00:50:11.260
Okay. I'm more open to that analysis than Sean.
00:50:15.820
I think one of the biggest stories of the last four months, and really go back further, but more
00:50:21.160
impactful as president, is the degree to which woke culture, in all its manifestations, is on the
00:50:28.180
retreat. It's almost an unfathomable story. The only thing I can compare it to was at the end of
00:50:34.260
the Cold War, as Eastern European countries started to change so quickly, and the Berlin Wall came down.
00:50:41.980
If you look at Silicon Valley, so many of the leaders there are now not just neutral, but they're
00:50:47.040
very pro-Trump. Their employees, I thought, would revolt. They have not, or at least not openly.
00:50:52.220
The Washington Post owner announces, we're not going to endorse Kamala Harris. I thought there'd be
00:50:56.960
mass resignations. A lot of people have left the paper, but the paper continues to run.
00:51:01.960
Harvard, although they're at war with the president, clearly on the retreat. So much has
00:51:08.160
changed in the culture where political correctness is no longer terrorizing people. I'm just wondering
00:51:16.820
if you think what's happened has happened simply because of the firm actions of this administration,
00:51:24.080
or did they basically just tap into something that was already ripe to happen?
00:51:30.080
Well, you may remember the story, the childhood story about the emperor who had no clothing.
00:51:36.020
And all of his advisors had told him that having no clothing was great and that it was exactly what
00:51:40.500
he should do. And as he's walking down the street, this little boy goes, he's naked. And the emperor
00:51:46.220
looks around and suddenly realizes, yeah, I'm naked. You guys are crazy.
00:51:49.000
I think what happened was there's a remarkable story to be told someday, which at least goes back to the
00:51:56.700
early 60s. And I wrote some of it for The Spectator a while back. The American left has roots all the
00:52:05.440
way back to the beginning of the 20th century of despising American bourgeois culture, believing the
00:52:13.160
average person's incompetent. I mean, Woodrow Wilson said publicly that we have to have experts because
00:52:18.360
normal people can't make decisions. And that process of thought has grown and mutated for
00:52:27.060
over a century. It gained, in Lenin's sense, the commanding heights, the universities, the news
00:52:34.580
media, the people from the universities began to infiltrate the corporations. So the 29-year-old
00:52:40.200
assistant to the president is totally left-wing nutso and gets the president to do things stupid like
00:52:45.520
having a transvestite for, you know, for a Bud Light. I mean, you go down and look at what was
00:52:52.060
going on. But everybody thought that it was unavoidable. It was irritating. We wish it wasn't
00:52:57.800
happening. But what can you do about it? Where Trump is sort of amazing is he knew, he intuited that
00:53:06.160
among a huge block of Americans, much bigger than his vote, actually, that people despised us. We do a
00:53:13.280
project called the America's New Majority Project, which people can go to that website. And we've
00:53:18.420
been taking polling since 2018. And you ask questions, for example, should boys be in girls
00:53:23.960
sports? No, 15% say yes. Should teachers control everything that happens to children with no
00:53:29.620
knowledge of the parent? 15% say yes. You can go down a whole series of these things. And what you
00:53:34.500
have is that AOC, who's much more radical culturally than Bernie Sanders, I mean, Sanders is an old-time
00:53:42.020
left-wing socialist. AOC's worldview, which is very central to the Democratic Party, has really become
00:53:50.940
dominant, ultimately has a base so small that they're going to be crushed if they stay there.
00:53:59.320
And what happened was Trump stood up, starting really in 15 and 16, when his first attacks on
00:54:06.040
illegal immigration horrified people. You may remember the first Fox debate where he got in
00:54:12.080
this brutal knockdown with Megyn Kelly. You flinched, I flinched, Calista flinched, watching it on TV.
00:54:19.400
I watched the Frank Luntz focus group. Everybody in the elite said he lost this debate. And I began
00:54:27.220
looking at the various websites where people could vote, and he was getting 70% in a field of 16.
00:54:34.820
And by midnight that night, I thought, there is a phenomenon building here that none of us
00:54:40.180
understand. And I think that Trump was tapping the root of people who are sick and tired of being told
00:54:47.940
they have to suffer lies. And so, I mean, just the act, and again, this is radical,
00:54:53.700
the act of saying there are two sexes, male and female. Biologically true, very different than the
00:54:59.380
cultural issue of gender. But just the act of saying that was, of course, verboten.
00:55:04.180
And people have now, and this is where Europeans are in deep trouble, and in Canada, because the
00:55:10.020
structures there, the elites, are desperately clinging to power in order to impose lies on their
00:55:15.620
population. And in every single one of those countries, people are beginning to rebel in terms
00:55:20.740
of populist movements. I know it's a mixed picture, but I'm going to ask you to answer binary.
00:55:25.060
Is the American left adjusting to the reality that they're out of step on so many cultural issues
00:55:31.300
and moving towards change? Or do you think they're more dug in and still have their eyes closed on
00:55:36.740
things like trans athletes in women's sports? You may be the best political reporter I know.
00:55:44.420
So I'm going to venture out here, and then you can explain to me whether I'm close to right.
00:55:50.420
I believe they're heading towards a civil war. I believe that the rational, I mean,
00:55:56.260
in a sense, AOC and Schumer is a perfect model. Schumer is the old time, yes, I'm a liberal,
00:56:01.460
but let's not be crazy. AOC is, well, if you're not crazy, you can't be a Democrat.
00:56:07.780
You know, and I think that it seems to me in place after place, you're going to have that kind of a fight.
00:56:14.660
All right. I appreciate your kind words. I don't know the answer to the question,
00:56:17.540
so I can't help you. I was hoping you were going to tell me the answer.
00:56:21.060
No, I'm still working on it. All right. A couple rapid rounds, because I know you like
00:56:24.500
rapid rounds. First, I'm going to name two Democrats. You pick the one who you think is
00:56:29.300
more likely to be their party's nominee for president in 2028. Binary choice, just one name.
00:57:02.420
He seems to have common sense and he seems to have an ability to talk to people in normal English.
00:57:07.780
I mean, from what I've seen, at least, again, I'm not a student of his, but from what I've seen,
00:57:16.500
Interesting. So it sounds like, from what you said, that you think he may be their front runner if he
00:57:21.380
He could be. I mean, again, if he can put the money together, because you're going to be up against
00:57:25.700
people like Pritzker, you're going to have the money to drown you.
00:57:29.380
Yeah. I remain deeply skeptical of Governor Pritzker.
00:57:33.700
The Illinois record just seems like not a perfect calling card.
00:57:37.700
Well, he is not a perfect. I look at Pritzker and think, you know, not since
00:57:41.620
President Taft have we had this kind of a candidate.
00:57:46.340
Yeah. I'm not currently in a position to rule out weight as a factor in qualification, so I cut
00:57:54.820
him some slack. All right. Word association. One or two words max for Trump figures. One or two words
00:58:19.620
These are very good answers, by the way, audience.
00:59:17.300
I just, I mean, he seems to have a very strong grip on some people and I'm underwhelmed.
00:59:23.220
Underwhelmed by his intellect, his policy, by his influence, by some of his attitudes, some of his views.
00:59:28.660
How do you, how do you distinguish between him and Charlie?
00:59:35.060
Um, oh, I think Charlie's much less on the fringe than Tucker is.
00:59:39.940
And do you have a personal relationship with Tucker?
00:59:45.380
That surprises me because you know most people like that.
00:59:55.680
Um, uh, there's more, there's another White House person I want to ask you about.
01:00:06.880
Um, is there, are, is there one or two people in the, in the government who you think are currently,
01:00:12.000
who you think are unsung heroes who work in the administration?
01:00:16.240
Um, well, I mean, you have to think Linda McMahon, who took on a job that turned to be
01:00:22.360
radically harder than I'm sure I think she thought it would be.
01:00:26.920
Anybody else who you think is, is, is kind of a star who doesn't get sufficient attention?
01:00:31.540
Um, no, I don't want to pick out any one person.
01:00:38.840
I want to ask you about AI, um, because you've always been interested in the future and in
01:00:44.180
Do you look at it as more of a danger or more of as an opportunity?
01:00:49.320
I mean, it's like asking me about electricity in 1880 or the internal combustion engine
01:00:59.940
It'll be developed all over the world, whether we do it or not.
01:01:07.260
In other ways it could be an enormous advantage.
01:01:09.700
And I think that's, that's a conversation we'll have for the next half century.
01:01:12.800
How would you describe, I talked in the beginning of the program about asymmetrical advantages
01:01:18.560
and sometimes a party has one that's so large, it can be part of being dispositive in an election.
01:01:24.220
How would you describe the current relationship or the current, uh, balance of power between
01:01:28.880
the left and the right and regarding the media?
01:01:31.240
And I'm defining the media broadly, CBS news, TikTok podcast, who's got the advantage
01:01:38.000
I don't have quantitative data, but my, my sense is from the polling we do, um, if you
01:01:46.780
think of culture rather than politics, this country is clearly moving to the right and
01:01:53.200
it's moving to the right in reaction to its perception of the left.
01:01:56.400
I mean, I thought in Trump's speech to the Congress, the, the brief section where he talks
01:02:01.660
about merit, that we ought to hire on merit, we ought to promote on merit, which is a direct
01:02:06.200
assault on the left's core cultural value, uh, that you should not reward individualism.
01:02:11.900
Um, that, that was an important cultural point, uh, when he went to Alabama and listed 10 things
01:02:19.200
They're all very conservative, uh, in a cultural sense.
01:02:23.200
So from my perspective, uh, what's happening is, and again, these are all old colleagues of
01:02:33.360
They don't understand, and the big media, they don't understand that the culture and
01:02:37.880
the technology are all making their world disappear.
01:02:42.420
I mean, it's not, it's not even whether you're right or left, it's just irrelevant.
01:02:46.220
And second, they don't realize that we now have this enormous capacity on the internet for
01:02:53.360
people to find each other, uh, and, and to pay attention to each other.
01:02:57.540
I mean, you know, I, I get, uh, I have about 2.2 million followers on Facebook, on, uh, on
01:03:07.420
Uh, but I'll, some days, and I'm not quite Trump, but some days I'll post things and I'll
01:03:16.580
Well, I can write a letter to the editor or an article in the Wall Street Journal, the
01:03:21.040
Just, I'm not sure I'm going to get 40,000 likes because I'm not sure people are going
01:03:27.280
If, if I send you a link to this episode, would you post it on X?
01:03:35.920
I think, I think you're a very important contribution to the American system.
01:03:40.260
You're very generous and, and I appreciate the kind words and I'm very grateful to you for
01:03:43.420
making time and I wish you the best of luck, uh, trying to peddle this book because no
01:03:49.360
matter how good a book is, you can't take it for granted.
01:03:53.720
Trump's Triumph, it's, uh, Speaker Gingrich's, uh, was like your 43rd book?
01:04:02.740
It's available now and it's, it's an important look at an historical figure, whether you
01:04:07.480
like Donald Trump or not, there's no denying he's an extremely important historical figure.
01:04:11.280
And as the speaker said, if he dances well, having been invited to the dance by the American
01:04:15.680
people, he will be an extremely important historical figure.
01:04:26.080
You can like, subscribe, uh, watch us on YouTube, listen to us as a podcast.
01:04:30.380
And every Tuesday and Thursday, we'll have new episodes.
01:04:32.900
So we'll see you have a great weekend and we'll see you next week on Tuesday.