Newt Gingrich on What Trump Could Accomplish in a Second Term

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Obama, News, Wnyc, Washington, Barack, President, Lizza, Wickenden

4.2 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2024

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Long before Donald Trump got serious about politics, Newt Gingrich saw himself as the revolutionary in Washington, introducing a combative style of politics that helped his party become a dominating force in Congress. Setting the template for Trump, Gingrich described Democrats not as an opposing team with whom to make alliances but as an alien force—a “cultural élite”—out to destroy America. Gingrich has written no fewer than five admiring books about Trump, and he was involved in pushing the lie of the stolen election of 2020. Like many in the Party, he balks at some of Trump’s tactics, but always finds an excuse. “I would probably not have used the language Trump used,” for example in calling Vice-President Kamala Harris “mentally disabled,” Gingrich says. “Partly because I think that it doesn’t further his cause. . . . I would simply say that he is a very intense personality . . . and occasionally he has to explode.” But he sees Trump as seasoned and improved with age, and his potential in a second term far greater. “It’s almost providential: he’s had four years [out of office] to think about what he’s learned . . . and he has a much deeper grasp of what has to be done and how to do it.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the political scene. I'm David Remnick. Early each week, we bring you a conversation from our episode of the New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:16.0	Earlier this week the editors of the New Yorker probably to no one's surprise
0:20.0	endorse the Democrat, Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
0:25.0	The long editorial published in the magazine and on New Yorker.com
0:29.0	in addition to reviewing Harris's virtues and promise
0:32.0	made the case that Donald Trump is simply
0:35.1	unfit, morally unfit to hold the office. If Trump is elected once more he
0:41.4	come to the White House in a spirit of vengeance.
0:44.4	That's his word.
0:46.1	His economic policies, his tariffs and tax cuts for the wealthy,
0:50.3	they'd hammer the middle class with inflation and aggravate the inequality in this country,
0:55.0	which is already extremely severe.
0:58.4	He'd go on belittling the climate emergency and leave the people of Ukraine to the tender mercies of Vladimir Putin.
1:06.2	In short, he beat Trump unbound, a threat to the constitutional order and the national
1:11.1	security of the United States.
1:13.0	Recently I spoke on the program with Sarah Longwell, a leader of the Never Trump Republicans.
1:19.0	Longwell sees the MAGA movement as an aberration, even a betrayal of conservative values, but that's a fringe view
1:25.8	now in the Republican Party. The most influential Republicans see Trump still as their champion.
1:33.0	And a key figure here is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
1:37.0	Long before Trump got serious about politics,
1:40.0	Gingrich was the revolutionary who wanted to break Washington. He went to battle with
1:45.2	Democrats not as an opposing team but as an alien force. Cultural elites out to
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