Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - Newt Gingrich on The Lessons from the 1994 Republican Revolution | The TRUTH Podcast #35

In this episode, Newt Gingrich talks about his new book, March to the Majority, and the lessons he learned from the 1994 Republican Revolution, and how they can apply them to the current political and economic problems we re all facing. He also discusses why he s running for president in 2024, and why he thinks it s a good time to be a presidential candidate in the country we ve all grown up in. He also talks about the lessons we can learn from Ronald Reagan s presidency and the impact it had on our nation s founding ideals, and what they can teach us about how we should be thinking about the challenges we re facing today. And he reminds us that we re not living in a perfect world, but in a world where we re living in moments where we can try to live up to the ideals of our founding. Thank you for listening to this episode of the podcast, and thanks for supporting the podcast and our efforts to make a difference in the world. Tweet Me! with your thoughts, opinions, or suggestions for future episodes. Timestamps: 1:00:00 - Who governs? 2:30 - What are the lessons from Reagan's presidency? 3:15 - How Reagan stood up to President Bill Clinton? 4:20 - What lessons can we learn from Reagan? 5:40 - What would you tell a younger generation? 6:00 7:10 - What should we do in 2020? 8:10 9:00 What are some of the lessons Reagan taught us? 11: How Reagan had an amazing impact on the country? 12: What was the most successful president? 13:20 14: Why you should be an independent? 15:00 Why you need to earn your own way? 16: What are you going to work for yourself? 17:00 How do you have an independent government? 18:00 You should work for it? 19:00 Do you want to get up up in the morning? 21: What does the left do up? 22: What do you believe in the work ethic? 27:00 Does the left? 26:00 Can you get up by the left by the right? 29:30 What does it matter? 30: What should you work up to work up the morning after you should go up the way that you should get up the bed? 31:00 Is it a problem?

00:00:02.000 So I've often said that we're in a 1776 moment today.

00:00:29.000 We've had an American Revolution 250 years ago fought to restore certain ideals in this country that were different from the way Old World Europe had lived and governed for most of human history.

00:00:44.000 was done the other way.

00:00:46.000 In 1776, in this country, we said that it was we the people who decided how we settle our political differences.

00:00:52.000 Climate change, racial justice, doesn't matter. 0.98

00:00:55.000 We the people settle those differences through our constitutional republic and our form of governance in this country, which is enshrined in the constitution, the strongest guarantors of freedoms in human history.

00:01:07.000 I think we live in one of those moments today.

00:01:09.000 I say it's a 1776 moment in this Who governs?

00:01:13.000 That's the question at issue.

00:01:14.000 And I think 2024 has an opportunity to be one of those revolutions as well, reviving the ideals of the American Revolution.

00:01:23.000 We've had certain moments in American history.

00:01:25.000 The 1980 Reagan Revolution revived some of those ideals from our nation's founding.

00:01:30.000 One of those moments, though, that we haven't talked about in a long time is a revolution led by a man who I'm going to be talking to on today's episode of the podcast, and I'm excited to.

00:01:41.000 He's a friend.

00:01:42.000 He's become a friend over the last couple of years who I'm excited to hear from.

00:01:46.000 In his latest book, March to the Majority, he talks about the real story of the 1994 Republican Revolution that he led.

00:01:58.000 And as we think about the American Revolution, the revolution that's coming in 2024, that there was no better person to Walk us through the history of the 1994 revolution and the man himself, Newt Gingrich, who wrote his latest book, Laying This Out.

00:02:13.000 I'm excited to hear and read that book, hear about it from him today.

00:02:17.000 Newt, welcome to the podcast and I'm excited to dive into part of our history that we would do well to remember today.

00:02:24.000 You led it and I'm excited to hear from you on what you think the lessons are that relate to today.

00:02:31.000 First of all, it's great to be with you because we've done three podcasts on Newt's World with you.

00:02:38.000 You've always been an amazing guest.

00:02:41.000 You're one of the smartest people I know.

00:02:43.000 And I think both your profound understanding of what's going on in America right now and your sheer knowledge of the system that we're caught up in, both political and economic, makes you one of the most interesting people in the 2024 campaign. makes you one of the most interesting people in the

00:03:02.000 I wrote March to the Majority in part because I think we're at a moment when the lessons we learned in a 16-year project to elect a majority and then four years of negotiating with President Bill Clinton, I think those lessons actually apply directly to today and, And in that sense, March to the Majority is more of a playbook for the present than a history book.

00:03:31.000 We're using the examples of history to teach lessons that I think I think your campaign is an example of that.

00:03:40.000 There's a hunger for people who talk about the basics.

00:03:45.000 We were just looking at my own podcast, Reach, and our most popular podcast in the last three months was on the Federalist Papers.

00:03:55.000 You wouldn't think of that as a hot selling topic, but I think out there, there are millions of Americans who know that things are not going well, that we have to have some real change.

00:04:07.000 And March to the Majority was an effort to explain that.

00:04:11.000 When I got elected, I ran twice and lost in 1974 and 76. I finally won in 1978. And when I won, we had been, the Republicans in the House, had been in the minority for 24 years.

00:04:28.000 So when I set out as a brand new freshman, I was asked to chair a committee on thinking through how to become a majority.

00:04:38.000 And I remind people we failed in 1980, 82, 84, 86, 88, 90, and 92. So we had 16 years of effort.

00:04:49.000 And it wasn't that we weren't trying.

00:04:51.000 The mountain was a lot bigger than we thought it was.

00:04:54.000 It was harder to climb.

00:04:55.000 And we had to keep learning new lessons.

00:04:57.000 When we won in 1994, we were standing on Ronald Reagan's shoulders.

00:05:02.000 Virtually everything we stood for in the contract with America came straight from Reagan.

00:05:08.000 For example, Reagan first campaigned in the fall of 1965 for governor, advocating welfare reform.

00:05:17.000 We passed welfare reform in 1996, 31 years later.

00:05:23.000 And it had an amazing impact just as Reagan had predicted.

00:05:27.000 Millions of people went to work.

00:05:30.000 Incomes went up.

00:05:31.000 Children left poverty.

00:05:33.000 It was the most successful program at raising children from poverty that we've ever had.

00:05:39.000 Wow.

00:05:40.000 And then we went on to, by the way, the left hated it.

00:05:43.000 The left, for some reason, rejects the work ethic and wants dependency and rejects the idea that you should get up in the morning and go earn your own independent way forward.

00:05:54.000 Because they want you to depend on government to provide you with what they deem the appropriate way forward.

00:06:01.000 Can I ask you a question on this?

00:06:04.000 Because I think what's so interesting about this 1994 revolution and your perspective on it is you are still...

00:06:11.000 Mercifully, alive, well, sharp today.

00:06:16.000 And so you can uniquely tie some of these lessons to today.

00:06:20.000 Did those work requirements, like how did that in the so-called work fair in 1996, how did that compare to some of the debates in the most recent bill that was passed as part of the debt ceiling negotiation and the work requirements that were or weren't added in this latest legislation?

00:06:41.000 Well, you have to start with understanding that Joe Biden is about 70 miles to the left of Bill Clinton.

00:06:49.000 So that Biden is basically co-owned by the radical left.

00:06:54.000 And they hate all of this stuff.

00:06:57.000 The House Republicans, led by Speaker McCarthy, made some kind of work requirement, one of the central provisions of Of getting to an agreement on the debt ceiling.

00:07:07.000 They got some limited, real but limited steps in that direction.

00:07:12.000 But they were hedged around with as many limitations as the left could think of, because the left didn't want to do anything.

00:07:21.000 I think there's still a great opportunity here for a bill that will provide for even more dramatic and bolder work requirements.

00:07:30.000 We just got a poll back in.

00:07:32.000 I run a project called the America's New Majority Project Which you can see at americasnewmajorityproject.com.

00:07:40.000 And for the last five years, starting in 2018, we've been doing a lot of in-depth surveys.

00:07:45.000 Just got another survey back in.

00:07:47.000 Well over 70% of the American people favor having some kind of a work requirement.

00:07:52.000 Yes.

00:07:53.000 There's a deep, instinctive American belief that, as Ronald Reagan used to say, work is the best social program.

00:08:00.000 And the left is just totally wrong about this issue.

00:08:04.000 So, would you say that some of the ones you passed in 1996, did those expire or what changed about that in terms of how did those fall away?

00:08:16.000 At every step, the left has found ways to sort of nibble away at it.

00:08:21.000 So they passed various bills.

00:08:25.000 If you were under a certain age, it didn't apply to you.

00:08:31.000 If you were a single mother, it didn't apply to you.

00:08:35.000 Their most recent fight was if you had...

00:08:39.000 You've grown up and gone to some kind of program for foster care.

00:08:46.000 It didn't apply to you.

00:08:48.000 I mean, the left believes in the maximum number of victims.

00:08:52.000 So tell me in what way you're a victim and I'll tell you why we shouldn't do anything to make you actually be an independent citizen.

00:08:59.000 That's the heart of the left's approach.

00:09:02.000 And so you think that that was sort of chipped away at, you know, principally under Obama, I suppose that would have been the case?

00:09:08.000 Starting under Obama and then accelerated by Biden.

00:09:12.000 But it's been a – when the Democrats had the House, the Senate and the President, they did everything they could to roll back welfare reform because it is – Such a fundamental violation of their belief in a government which controls you and takes care of you.

00:09:29.000 And that if you're not a Harvard or Yale or Princeton graduate, you should not be expected to earn a living.

00:09:36.000 And so this was kind of in the 2008 to 2012 Obama term number one, perhaps, or 2008 to 2010 term.

00:09:44.000 Yeah, and then when the Democrats regained control, they kept chipping away at it.

00:09:50.000 You know, they have great staff, and they're brilliant at writing three paragraphs that move them a half inch towards where they want to get.

00:09:59.000 And then they come back next year, and they write three paragraphs.

00:10:02.000 And they do this year after year after year.

00:10:04.000 You know, the other great example, which we have at americasnewmajorityproject.com, is parental rights.

00:10:12.000 The country is overwhelmingly in favor of parents having the right to know what's happening to their children.

00:10:19.000 It's like an 84% issue.

00:10:22.000 And yet the 11% who are opposed, the other five are undecided.

00:10:26.000 The 11% who are opposed include the teachers' unions, and they fight bitterly In fact, you may have seen the other week there was actually a physical fight between Antifa and a group of Armenian parents in California over whether or not they should have access to knowing what's happening with their children.

00:10:45.000 Because on the left, your children are wards of the state.

00:10:49.000 The state should control them.

00:10:51.000 The state should define them.

00:10:53.000 If the state tells them that they are transgender, they are. 1.00

00:10:56.000 If the state tells them that, you know, if you're white, that you're inherently a racist, then you are.

00:11:06.000 I mean, this is literally – we're living through in a very weird way exactly what George Orwell wrote about in 1984. He was in many ways prescient about America actually or where we are today.

00:11:23.000 Let me just – just to draw from a positive lesson and this is to actually take nothing away from Kevin McCarthy but you and him were in the same position leading a Republican – It's what you talk about in your book.

00:11:36.000 Your book is all about laying this out, which I love is now that we have this space of almost 30 years since you led that revolution, you can kind of view it more objectively where people don't have to see it through the partisan lenses that they saw it at the time.

00:11:49.000 So I'm so excited that your book is actually comes at a unique time.

00:11:54.000 But you were both Republican majority leaders in the House with a Democrat president.

00:11:59.000 Is it fair to say that the workfare requirements that you got across the line in 96 had more robust work requirements than what was in the most recent deal that was reached in the legislation that Biden signed?

00:12:17.000 Yeah, I think that's fair to say.

00:12:18.000 And the point I make to people about the debt ceiling bill is that if it's a first step, then it's worth signing and it's worth fighting for.

00:12:28.000 If it is a last step, it's a terrible bill.

00:12:31.000 You know, when we entered office in January of 95, we didn't leap to four consecutive balanced budgets.

00:12:37.000 We didn't leap to the largest capital gains tax cut in history.

00:12:40.000 And we certainly didn't leap to welfare reform.

00:12:43.000 All those took a lot of work and a lot of effort.

00:12:45.000 I think you'll see the House Republicans move a bill on welfare reform.

00:12:50.000 They've already moved one on parental rights.

00:12:52.000 And I think you'll see them in the next week or so bringing out a budget proposal, which is very bold and which moves us back towards a balanced budget, which the only four consecutive balanced budgets in your lifetime we did in the Congress when I was speaker.

00:13:08.000 So gradual changes is not always bad.

00:13:12.000 But your point was, I think, what do you think it was?

00:13:14.000 I mean, do you think the culture, what I'm wondering is that the culture of the Democratic Party itself has changed, where the kinds of changes that you implemented, that Clinton signed, like, what were some of those work requirements?

00:13:25.000 Like, can you just be tangible for a second?

00:13:27.000 Basically, what it said was that as long as you did not have very, very young children, there was an expectation you would go to work.

00:13:35.000 And more importantly, it said that welfare officers would become employment officers.

00:13:41.000 Up until then, the welfare workers thought their job was to maximize your ability to get money from the government.

00:13:48.000 After we passed our bill in 1996, they were instructed in every state in the country that their job was to help you go find a job.

00:13:56.000 And we had been very deeply affected by a program in New York called America Works, which ironically Mario Cuomo had helped start and which was launched by two former social workers.

00:14:10.000 And I was focused on taking the hardcore unemployed, retraining them, placing them a job, mentoring them and counseling them.

00:14:19.000 And it only got paid if they, in fact, had a job for six months or more.

00:14:24.000 So it was a very interesting achievement-oriented program.

00:14:30.000 To tell you again, the liberal model, they capped the number of people that they could deal with annually because they didn't want to take too many people off welfare.

00:14:39.000 And the two social workers became independently wealthy because this was a private company and it was doing a great job.

00:14:46.000 And so the other social workers hated them.

00:14:49.000 Because they were out here making money, helping the poor learn how to be productive.

00:14:53.000 But I went up and visited with them, studied them, and that was a significant step towards where we ended up.

00:15:00.000 And I think it's fair to say that we need another national debate on Like the one we had in the period 93, 94 up through 96. Because by the time we were done debating it, something like 92% of the country favored welfare reform, including 88% of the people on welfare.

00:15:24.000 Including how many?

00:15:26.000 88% of the people on welfare.

00:15:28.000 By when?

00:15:29.000 By the time you passed it?

00:15:30.000 By the time we passed it in 96. Wow.

00:15:33.000 So you won by way of debate.

00:15:35.000 A rare thing that ever happens these days.

00:15:38.000 No, no, no.

00:15:38.000 Listen, Margaret Thatcher once said, first you win the argument, then you win the vote.

00:15:46.000 And by the way, your candidacy is an example of that.

00:15:48.000 I mean, you're out here making a series of bold, different arguments.

00:15:53.000 Clearly a step towards saying, you know, if you agree with all this and you are drawing a different vision of where America is and where America needs to go.

00:16:03.000 It's exciting to me because when I – it's almost liberating, Newt, when I see – when I study Reagan, when I study what you did in the early 90s, early to mid-90s, it feels liberating because it doesn't feel like you have to – there's not a ton we have to reinvent.

00:16:20.000 I mean, there's certainly awakening to the unique threats we face today.

00:16:25.000 It doesn't present itself in the same form.

00:16:28.000 But it's been done before.

00:16:30.000 It's been done before.

00:16:31.000 I think that's a profound insight.

00:16:33.000 The solutions are all the same.

00:16:36.000 The challenges may be different.

00:16:38.000 Yes.

00:16:38.000 Yes, that's how I feel.

00:16:40.000 Exactly.

00:16:40.000 It presents itself in a different form.

00:16:42.000 And so I think that you're an inspiration in that sense to me because it takes a little bit of the burden off where you don't have to feel like you have to come up.

00:16:50.000 At times I feel like this, where you have to come up with the solution de novo from scratch again in a vacuum, that's a big burden.

00:16:58.000 But if you're able to just study the history, it's why I'm glad you're writing books and putting out, still churning out books like you are.

00:17:04.000 It's good because it actually, in the further back you go, I feel like the less distorted the modern readership has to be because there's a proximity bias, right?

00:17:17.000 If we're talking about something that happened under Donald Trump, no, no, we can't touch that right now because people couldn't evaluate that argument on its merits because of the proximity of it.

00:17:26.000 But if you're talking now about something that you delivered in the 90s, you know, many of the people who are pushing back on that today weren't even born back then.

00:17:34.000 So it seems like we have like a certain objectivity that comes from not having an attachment of vitriol to the person you're talking about.

00:17:41.000 There's also a continuity.

00:17:43.000 I tell everybody to go to YouTube and pull up Ronald Reagan's October 1964 televised speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater.

00:17:55.000 It's called A Time for Choosing.

00:17:57.000 It's pure Reagan.

00:17:58.000 I mean, it's everything, as he once said, he didn't change what he was saying, but the world came around.

00:18:06.000 And Reagan, of course, was largely quoting Lincoln and the Founding Fathers.

00:18:11.000 So the lineage of the things that work is sort of like you boil an egg by boiling an egg.

00:18:19.000 You don't have to reinvent it.

00:18:21.000 And by the way, putting an egg in the freezer makes it hard, but it's not boiled.

00:18:25.000 And so there are ground rules, there are practical things.

00:18:28.000 And we all stand on the shoulders of the founding fathers who may have been as wise a group of secular leaders as we've ever had in the human race.

00:18:39.000 They had studied a long time.

00:18:41.000 They were very practical politicians.

00:18:43.000 Every one of them understood winning elections.

00:18:45.000 At the same time, they understood that you had to design a government for human beings, that you weren't designing it for angels and you weren't designing it for some abstract theory.

00:18:56.000 You were trying to find a way to protect us.

00:18:59.000 It's a very careful balance.

00:19:01.000 You want to protect us from foreign governments by having a strong enough government that it could survive.

00:19:07.000 But you want to protect us from our own government by having enough different checks and balances that you could never get to a dictatorship.

00:19:16.000 And part of what's truly frightening about what we're living through right now is the degree to which the left is moving towards a dictatorship, at least a dictatorship of ideas, and a willingness to lock up anyone who disagrees with them.

00:19:31.000 And that's such a profound violation of the American tradition that it's really pretty scary.

00:19:37.000 I do think it's scary.

00:19:39.000 That's an example of the threats presenting themselves in new forms.

00:19:42.000 But the right answers have been with us since 1776. We just need to revive them.

00:19:47.000 Let me – you might have asked kind of on a personal note for you, right?

00:19:52.000 So in 1994, you delivered these major successes, many of which are signed into law in the couple of years subsequently.

00:20:01.000 When did you step down from your job?

00:20:03.000 When did you cease being Speaker of the House?

00:20:06.000 Well, in 1998, we didn't do as well in the election.

00:20:10.000 We won, but we did not win.

00:20:12.000 We lost a few seats when everybody thought we'd gained 15 or 20 seats.

00:20:17.000 And by November of 1998, I had been driving the party since the summer of 93. And candidly, people were just tired of me.

00:20:28.000 You know, I got up every day and said, we're going to gain another five yards.

00:20:33.000 And by the late fall of 1998, they were going, can we have somebody who will let us rest for a while?

00:20:41.000 And I had a problem very similar to McCarthy in that there were about 15 or 18 members who were very hardcore who said flatly, they wouldn't vote for me even if I was nominated.

00:20:54.000 That they were determined to drive me out of office.

00:20:57.000 In a certain way, it's a mark of pride that they're actually taking the principles that you started with in 1993 and they almost want to be the standard bearer of the principles even more than they felt you were.

00:21:11.000 So in a certain sense, there's a certain pride in that, right?

00:21:13.000 Were you annoyed by them or were you proud of them?

00:21:15.000 How did you feel if you had to parse it?

00:21:17.000 Both.

00:21:17.000 I mean, I was an annoyed person.

00:21:19.000 Look, in a way, they reminded me of me.

00:21:24.000 That's what I'm saying.

00:21:43.000 And I was really tired.

00:21:46.000 I mean, I didn't think I realized until probably the summer of 1999 just how exhausted I'd become.

00:21:53.000 So in a way, you know, sometimes you must have had this experience once or twice, although you're so dramatically younger than me that you haven't had quite all the, you haven't gotten quite this tired.

00:22:03.000 But there are times in life when you know that you need to switch.

00:22:07.000 You need to do something different.

00:22:09.000 And if it becomes really obvious, the correct thing is do it.

00:22:13.000 And so I was at a point in my life where I really felt that the best thing I could do was go and find new projects and do new things.

00:22:24.000 I've never regretted it, and it gave me a chance to grow in other areas and to learn other things.

00:22:31.000 And I felt, frankly, having accomplished what was really a profound change in the power structure.

00:22:37.000 We had not been elected to a majority in 40 years.

00:22:41.000 We had not been re-elected since 1928. And so when I left, we not only had balanced the budget for four years, but we had shifted the balance of power in Washington decisively.

00:22:52.000 We kept the house for 12 years.

00:22:55.000 And what was really important was when we lost it in 2006, We had a whole lot of Republicans who knew you could regain it.

00:23:04.000 So you didn't have the defeatism and the apathy.

00:23:06.000 You had people who woke up every morning thinking, I want to be a chairman.

00:23:10.000 I want to win.

00:23:11.000 And the result was the Democrats only held it for four years.

00:23:15.000 We then won again in 10, kept it for eight years.

00:23:18.000 And at that point, the Democrats won, and we immediately had Kevin McCarthy and others saying, wait a second, I want to get power back.

00:23:25.000 So we had changed decisively the psychology of power in Washington by winning in 94 and then winning re-election in 96. And that, frankly, left me feeling pretty good.

00:23:38.000 I mean, that was a legacy that would be there no matter what.

00:23:41.000 That's a powerful story.

00:23:42.000 I mean, I think that answered my question, which was...

00:23:48.000 Did you consider running in that 2000 presidential election?

00:23:52.000 No.

00:23:53.000 The time I might have considered was rather 1996 because the wave had been so big.

00:24:01.000 We picked up 54 seats.

00:24:03.000 People were so enthusiastic.

00:24:05.000 But I looked at it and I thought, you know, I can either be an effective speaker or I can run for president, but I couldn't possibly do both.

00:24:13.000 And I felt that the great moment there, we'd look at it later.

00:24:16.000 I did finally run, and Clist and I decided to run in 2012. And we had a pretty good campaign for the amount of money we had, but Romney taught us- How much money did you have, if you don't mind me asking?

00:24:27.000 We probably spent about $14 million.

00:24:30.000 In the whole campaign?

00:24:31.000 Yes.

00:24:32.000 Romney spent $15 million in Florida alone.

00:24:36.000 So you spent $14 million in that whole campaign?

00:24:39.000 I think that's about right.

00:24:41.000 Don't hold me to that.

00:24:42.000 No, no, no.

00:24:42.000 I'm just saying ballpark.

00:24:44.000 And then Romney spent how much?

00:24:45.000 Well, he spent $15 million in Florida alone.

00:24:48.000 Okay.

00:24:49.000 Do you know how much he spent over?

00:24:50.000 I could probably look it up.

00:24:51.000 Yeah, I have no idea.

00:24:52.000 But he spent a lot.

00:24:53.000 I mean, look, we each had advantages.

00:24:56.000 I'm a really good debater.

00:24:58.000 He's really good at raising money.

00:25:00.000 And so you work to your strength.

00:25:03.000 Yeah.

00:25:05.000 That's funny.

00:25:06.000 So what was that inspiration for you to run in 2012?

00:25:09.000 And what were some of those lessons, actually?

00:25:11.000 I thought there was a huge vacuum of ideas that the Republican Party had decayed back into being basically a non-idea machine to raise money and go golfing and...

00:25:26.000 Hire consultants to run negative ads.

00:25:29.000 Second, I really felt that having somebody articulate enough to deal with Obama Would have really, I think, galvanized the country.

00:25:42.000 Obama was very vulnerable to people drawing a contrast because he'd run as a moderate.

00:25:48.000 He'd run as a guy who you could trust.

00:25:51.000 As my younger daughter, Jackie Cushman, who's really smart about this stuff, said one day, you know, that he ran promising to change and then you realize he actually wanted to change you, not change Washington.

00:26:06.000 And I think that that had sunk in, and there was an opportunity in 12, but it required somebody who was articulate and who valued ideas.

00:26:16.000 And Mitt's a very smart guy.

00:26:17.000 It's not that he's not smart.

00:26:18.000 But he never had developed a political philosophy, and he had never practiced debating.

00:26:26.000 I'd spent my whole career there.

00:26:28.000 Debating in the Congress and on television, what have you.

00:26:33.000 And so we were just – there's an amazing contrast in styles.

00:26:36.000 I remember I was in law school back then and we would watch those debates in the primary.

00:26:45.000 And I'm not saying this to flatter you or whatever, but I was a vehement fan and supporter because of what I saw on that debate stage.

00:26:54.000 There's a funny story where – You kind of made some jokes up there that were kind of quite funny at times, too.

00:27:02.000 I just remember laughing during those debates.

00:27:05.000 We were in law school at Yale.

00:27:07.000 This is where my wife and I met.

00:27:09.000 She was in med school.

00:27:09.000 I was in law school.

00:27:10.000 She lived diagonally across from me.

00:27:13.000 This is neither here nor there, but just a random story.

00:27:17.000 We're watching with a few friends in my apartment.

00:27:18.000 We're watching the debate, and you and Mitt are going at it.

00:27:23.000 And we were really laughing, like we were like kind of boisterously, kind of enjoying it, laughing and taking in.

00:27:30.000 And then we get a knock on the door and it's from the other guy who lives next door.

00:27:34.000 And he was just like, excuse me, like it's a little bit loud.

00:27:38.000 Do you mind turning it down?

00:27:39.000 And so the TV we thought was a little loud.

00:27:41.000 So we turned down the television and then like about this in the second half of the debate now, we get a knock on the door again.

00:27:49.000 And he says, excuse me, it's a little loud.

00:27:52.000 I said, what do you mean?

00:27:52.000 We turned down the debate.

00:27:54.000 So your voice, Mitt's voice, you know, are all down on the television.

00:27:56.000 He's like, no, it's not the TV. It's you guys.

00:28:01.000 And so, because our reactions to you were so loud.

00:28:04.000 So he said, I was kind of annoyed, but this guy has the gall.

00:28:07.000 So he was an undergrad.

00:28:09.000 He's actually from China.

00:28:11.000 And so we just invited him in.

00:28:14.000 We said, come on in and watch with us and check it out.

00:28:17.000 And so his English was sort of broken, but he was a smart guy.

00:28:21.000 Eric was his name.

00:28:22.000 And he came in and he watched the rest of the debate with us.

00:28:27.000 And you know what happened is we watched the rest of the debates that season with him.

00:28:33.000 He became an ardent, committed conservative, and he's a fan of yours, but you convinced this exchange student from China, or not exchange student, but sort of foreign student from China who was a Yale undergrad, he was a junior, into his, I get messages from him, emails from time to time now, and he's like, I mean, it's hard to get to the right of me, but he's now in his years since then found, you don't have to move the bookcase over on the wall to get to the right of me.

00:28:59.000 And this guy found his way there.

00:29:00.000 So anyway, funny story from those debates.

00:29:03.000 And you ended up having the impact, maybe not the impact you wanted to have, which is to win, which is what I was rooting for.

00:29:08.000 But nonetheless, you impacted people in ways you may not have known.

00:29:13.000 That's right.

00:29:14.000 No, I think ideas really matter.

00:29:16.000 They do.

00:29:17.000 And they're powerful.

00:29:18.000 They move people.

00:29:19.000 Yeah, they move people in their heart.

00:29:21.000 Yeah.

00:29:21.000 So it's one reason I'm glad you're running, because I think everybody who can bring new ideas, new insights, That's what the country...

00:29:30.000 We've got tons of money, but we don't have our tons of ideas.

00:29:34.000 I do think we live in these moments, and maybe this is sort of self-serving of me to say, but what you say speaks to me, where there are moments where we can take an executor of other people's ideas.

00:29:45.000 In fact, sometimes there may be moments where we're best off separating the two.

00:29:48.000 The idea of people over here, the visionary shouldn't be the executor.

00:29:52.000 The executor needs to get it done.

00:29:54.000 I think there are certain moments, though, that demand...

00:29:58.000 The person who leads actually be the visionary rather than the ideas guy who hands it over.

00:30:07.000 And I think that right now we live in one of those moments where we have this vacuum of national identity in our country.

00:30:13.000 A vacuum not just of ideas, but a vacuum of idealism itself.

00:30:17.000 A vacuum of what it means to be an American.

00:30:21.000 And part of what calls me into this is that I think that we do live in one of those moments where It's going to take whoever's implementing those ideas to understand bone deep in their own conviction.

00:30:35.000 This is actually what it means to be an American, to cut through all of the other obstacles that might otherwise show up in the way of the person who's merely implementing them.

00:30:45.000 And that's, for me, what called me into this.

00:30:47.000 I think maybe very similar to the way you felt in 2012. Well, look, I think time's a great challenge.

00:30:54.000 Require big ideas and people capable of both articulating them and then of persevering and getting them done.

00:31:03.000 And I think that that's why Thatcher and Reagan and Pope John Paul II were so astonishing to have all three of them at the same time.

00:31:11.000 Because they all three were idea people, but they were all three effective at executing.

00:31:16.000 And I think we need a cycle of that kind of knowing where we're going, but knowing how to get us there.

00:31:23.000 Brilliant.

00:31:24.000 Well, I'm looking forward to digging into that book.

00:31:27.000 I'll find some time during the campaign trail to do it in the buses of Iowa or New Hampshire.

00:31:32.000 And I thank you.

00:31:33.000 It's been a joy, you know, continuing our conversations over the last couple of years.

Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - June 26, 2023

Newt Gingrich on The Lessons from the 1994 Republican Revolution | The TRUTH Podcast #35

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