Newt Gingrich and Patrick Kennedy Talk to David Remnick About Fighting Opioid Abuse
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2017
⏱️ 20 minutes
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Summary
Newt Gingrich is one of the most influential conservatives of our time, and now he serves on Donald Trump’s transition team. As the Speaker of the House during the Clinton Administration, Gingrich forced a shutdown of the federal government during a budget fight. He helped to change the two-party system from one of tension and coöperation to a game of refusal that’s more akin to war. But Gingrich has previously achieved bipartisan support for funding science, and he is now an adviser to Advocates for Opioid Recovery, a nonprofit that that promotes government action on the opioid epidemic. The organization emphasizes addiction treatment based on science, rather than on punishment. Gingrich joins the former Democratic congressman Patrick Kennedy and David Remnick in a discussion about the effort. Remnick asks Gingrich whether he's concerned about the Trump Administration's interest in scientific fact as a basis for policy-making.
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| 1:12.3 | I'm Dorothy Wickend. On today's politics and more podcast, David Remnick talks to former |
| 1:18.0 | Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, and former Democratic Congressman Patrick |
| 1:23.0 | Kennedy. Gingrich and Kennedy are working together on a new project to combat opioid addiction. |
| 1:31.0 | Newt Gingrich was once called the godfather of Gridlock. |
| 1:35.0 | As Speaker of the House in the 1990s during the Clinton era, he forced the shutdown of the federal government during a budget fight. |
| 1:41.8 | And he helped change the two-party system from one of tension and |
| 1:45.3 | occasional cooperation to a game of absolute refusal and denial that's more akin to war. |
| 1:51.0 | He played that game very effectively. Gingrich was a strong, if occasionally critical supporter |
| 1:57.1 | of Donald Trump, he was spoken of as a possible vice president, and is now a vice chairman |
| 2:01.9 | on Trump's transition team. In the environment that Gingrich helped to create any bipartisan |
| 2:07.1 | effort at all always seemed like a minor miracle, so it's a little bit surprising that Gingrich himself |
| 2:13.1 | is an advisor to a new venture called Advocates for Opioid Recovery. It's a nonprofit that lays out policies |
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