March 7, 2025 • 32 mins
Newt talks about his experience attending President Donald J. Trump's address to the joint session of Congress. He describes the atmosphere, interactions, and preparations leading up to the event, including a reception at Speaker Mike Johnson's office. Newt highlights the strategic seating arrangements and the anticipation of potential disruptions by Democrats, which were effectively managed by Speaker Johnson and the Sergeant at Arms. The address itself is detailed, noting Trump's extensive coverage of various topics, his engagement with the audience, and the contrasting reactions from Republicans and Democrats. Newt emphasizes the positive reception of Trump's speech, its impact on his agenda, and the stark division between the supportive Republicans and the unresponsive "Zombie Democrats."
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
We've ended the journey of so called diversity, equity, and
inclusion policies all across the entire federal government, and indeed
the private sector and our military and our country will
be worked no longer. We believe that whether you are
(00:23):
a doctor, an accountant, a lawyer, or an air traffic
control you should be hired and promoted based on skill
and competence, not race or gender. Very important, based on merit,
and the Supreme Court, in a brave and very powerful decision,
(00:44):
has allowed us to do so.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thank you, Thank you, Paman.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
We have removed the poison of critical race theory from
our public schools, and I signed in order making it
the official policy of the United States Government that they
are are only two genders, male and female. Also signed
an executive order to bend men from playing in women's sports.
(01:11):
This will be our greatest era. With God's help, over
the next four years, we are going to lead this
nation even higher, and we are going to forge the freest,
most advanced, most dynamic, and most dominant civilization ever to
exist on the face of this earth. We are going
(01:33):
to create the highest quality of life, build the safest
and wealthiest, and the healthiest and most vital communities anywhere
in the world. We are going to conquer the vast
frontiers of science, and we're going to lead humanity into
space and plant the American flag on the planet Mars
(01:53):
and even far beyond. And through it all, we are
going to rediscover the unstoppable power of the American spirit,
and we are going to renew unlimited promise of the
American dream. Every single day, we will stand up and
we will fight, fight, fight for the country our citizens.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Believe in, and for the country our people deserve.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
My fellow Americans, get ready for an incredible future, because
the Golden Age of America has only just begun. It
will be like nothing that has ever been seen before.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
On this episode of News World, Klis and I were
guests a speaker Mike Johnson at President Donald J. Trump's
address to the Joint Session of Congress. Our seats were
directly above the House Democrats. It was an amazing place
to be. On the one hand, we could see President
Trump clearly. We were directly across from the First Lady
and her guests, and directly below us were the Democrats.
(03:10):
So I want to share with you what it was
like to be in the House Chamber on Tuesday night.
I want to start by just talking in general about
what a night like that is like. Klista and I
(03:32):
arrived early. We went to Speaker Johnson's office, where there
was a reception, and it was a very efficient way
to see a heck of a lot of congressmen and
their friends. So he chatted with folks, and I dropped
in briefly to discuss with Speaker Johnson the possibility of
the Democrats trying to be disruptive. He was totally prepared.
(03:53):
He and the Sergeant Arms had been working through it
for the previous week, and they knew that it was possible,
and they knew that they were going to handle it
in a very firm and authoritative way. So then we
wandered over to our seats. We've been assigned two seats
in Speaker Johnson's section, which is directly across from the
first Ladies area, and there's a great view of President Trump,
(04:18):
but also put us directly above the Democrats, which was
kind of fun to watch and see how they were
reacting what they were doing. So you get there early
for good reason, because it's a little bit complicated and confusing,
and there's not much space and people often go to
the wrong place and find they're in the wrong seat
and they've got to get up.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
And move around.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
So that went on for a while. Then you gradually
have the build up. The Supreme Court arrives, the diplomats arrive,
the military leadership is already there, and then the final
big build up. Of course, you have the US Senate
come in, and it's all very slow, takes a lot
of time because they're all politicians and they're all chatting
(05:00):
with each other. So it's a very effective way. Having
done this for many years, I can tell you the
amount of business you can get done before the speech
because everybody's there. There are no constituents, there's no staff,
there's no news media, and you're just talking one on
one with all sorts of folks.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
And that was going on now.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Interesting side note, going back to the French Revolution, which
happened to be very close to the way the US
House is organized. They had a dividing line down the middle,
and they had a right and a left, which is
based actually on the language of the French Revolution. I
remember at one point we were on the Republican side,
(05:40):
which if you're the president looking out, is ironically on
your left and the Democratic side is on your right.
And we were there at one point at one of
our first meetings with Ronald Reagan, all the Republicans were
gathered up, we were all sitting over on the left,
exactly where Republicans said today. He came down the middle aisle,
went over to the Democrat microphone and we're all staying.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
What is he doing?
Speaker 4 (06:04):
And he looked up for me and he said, oh, yeah,
this is where I used to be, walked over and
talked to us from the Republican microphone. Well, all these
folks are there, and you'll see some of them. For example,
Marcy Captors a great example. She's a Democratic congresswoman who
has survived miraculously in a series of close races in Toledo, Ohio.
She's always sets herself right on the center aisle so
(06:28):
that when the president comes in, she'll be able to
say hi to him and be on camera. And there's
certain people who do this. They'll go in very early
and they'll seize these seats and almost hold them like
personal property. So finally comes to the big moment and
they send out the committee to escort the president in
(06:48):
I had the strange experience when I first got elected
in nineteen seventy eight. In January of seventy nine, Jimmy Carter,
President Carter was coming to give his State of the Union.
And back then they don't do it this way now,
But back then the Home State delegation was the Escort Committee,
and so the ground rule was that the senior Democrat
(07:08):
and the senior Republican came in immediately behind the president.
Now I've been in office about thirty days, and because
I was the only Republican, I was by definition the
senior Republican. So I ended up walking in literally directly
behind the presidented States. A good friend of mine, who
had supported me, said that he fell off his couch
(07:30):
wondering how I had gotten promoted that rapidly, when of
course the whole thing was just an accident. They now
appoint the leadership from the House and the Senate, both
Democrat and Republican, and a number of Democrats did not
go to join the escort Committee, which was sort of
in their mind, I guess, a slap at President Trump.
They announced the President of States, and of course by
(07:53):
this stage, you have the Speaker of the House, who
is the actual host for the event because it's in
the House chamber. You have the Vice President in his
role as President of the Senate. So that's why those
two sit out behind the President, because the President in
fact is their guest, so he's there in a sense
subordinated to them in terms of procedure, although he's obviously
(08:16):
the President of States. So they announced the president. He
comes in, and of course you now have a ten
minute trying to get to the front because everybody wants
to shake his hand, everybody wants to say something to him,
and he's a very good at dealing with people, and
he doesn't mind it being slow. He knows the whole
country is watching, the cameras are right on him, and
(08:37):
it makes him bigger, more important. This whole time, of course,
we are all standing giving him a standing ovation for
about ten solid minutes. He comes up front, and if
you'll notice, he always hands a copy of his speech
to the Vice President and a copy of his speech
to the speaker. This is a ritual that has been
(08:57):
going on for a very long timeeeen ninety six for
the State of the Union, which is the one where
Bill Clinton says that the era of big government is
over and basically he's going to work with the House Republicans.
He comes in Al Gore, who at that time was
the Vice President and therefore President of the Senate. Al
Gore and I are sitting up there. Clinton comes in,
(09:17):
walks over, hands me an envelope which is not the speech.
I look at it for a second, I look at Gore.
We both shrug. I open it and it's a letter
that says to Speaker k Newt Gingrish from President William
Jefferson Clinton, You're right, I resign. We're both broken up, laughing.
It comes to say, oh, I gave you the wrong document.
(09:39):
Can I had that back?
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Please?
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Then he gave us the speech, and that's the speech
where he basically sold out the left and basically indicated
that he was going to work with the House Republicans
to reform welfare, balance the budget, and do all the
things we did. So the president comes in. He's now
giving both the Vice President and the speaker a copy
of his speech. He gets another round of applause, and
(10:02):
he's ready to start talking. And at that point, exactly
what we thought might happen a Democratic Congressman Green from Texas,
who had earlier filed an impeachment, who's sort of a
maverick and a wild guy, jumps up and starts yelling
at the President, and because he had been prepared, Mike
Johnson immediately gavel order and read from the Rules of
(10:26):
the House about the procedure and the requirement to operate
within the decorum of the House.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Members are directed to uphold and maintain decorum in the
House and to cease any further disruptions that you're warning.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
Well, that doesn't affect the congressman. He jumps back up
a second time.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Members are engaging in wilflin continuing breach of decorum, and
the Chair is prepared to direct the Sergeant at Arms
to restore order to the joint session.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Then he gets up a third time, and at that
point the Sergeant Arms comes over. This had all been
blanned all week. They thought this through very carefully, came over,
took him out of the.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
House, finding that members continue to engage in willful and
concerted disruption or proper decorum. The Chair now directs the
Sergeant at Arms to restore order, remove this gentleman from
the table.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Part of What it did is a signal to the
other Democrats. If you intact, act out, if you try
to do any of this, what you're going to discover
is that we're going to throw you out. You're not
going to be here very long. And interestingly, the only
other real display I saw, sitting directly above them, was
fairly late in the speech. Three of the women members
(11:44):
took off their jacket and they had on T shirts
that said resist, and they stood there for a minute together,
the three of them in their resist T shirts, and
then they voluntarily left before the sergeant arms could even
be called in. But I thought that Johnson, by reacting
so decisively and so quickly, had cut off the opposite
of what, for example, the president of Colemba University did.
(12:07):
That he had cut off any chance for any kind
of serious thing, which allowed Trump then.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
To give his speech.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
While some people at the White House have suggested he
would be about an hour long speech, which I never
thought was possible, partly because you just have applause time, etc.
He actually gave the longest speech to a joint session
of Congress in modern history. Bill Clinton had that record.
Clinton had spoken for an hour twenty eight minutes and
forty nine seconds.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
In two thousand, Trump.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Spoke for an hour thirty nine minutes in thirty two seconds,
which was almost up to his first term, when he
had spoken for an hour twenty two which was slightly
shorter than Clinton. There was a long speech, but frankly,
it was so well structured that it didn't seem all
that long. And I want to talk about that in
a minute. The fact is that overall you had this
(13:16):
very amazingly clear the lineage. You had the Republicans who
stood over and over and over, and the House Democrats
who never stood, and the Senate Democrats would stand occasionally
or applaud occasionally. But the rigidity among the House Democrats
was unbelievable. That now they had some people decide not
(13:38):
to come. I mean Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, for example,
Senator Patty Murray. But overall most of the Democrats came.
In fact, looking back, I wondered if they wouldn't have
been better off not coming now because some of them
didn't come. There were some vacancies on the Democratic side,
and I noticed after a couple of minutes there were
a group of Republicans who had decided they would go
(14:00):
sit on the Democratic side and fill up the vacancies.
So you would occasionally see people standing and applauding on
the Democratic side. They were always Republicans, they were never Democrats,
but they were over there having fun and started driving
the Democrats crazy. What I was struck by. First of all,
only talk about Trump's speech itself, and then I want
(14:21):
to talk about the Democrats' reaction, because I think they're
each worthy of considerable focus. This was a classically Trump's speech,
and I think, maybe because of the contrast with the Democrats,
the most consequential speech he's given up to now. And
I say that because I think that in this speech,
with the active help of the Democrats, Trump delineated two
(14:46):
remarkably different futures and two remarkably different styles. First of all,
if you think back to the speech and you get
a copy of it and you read through it, just
the sheer number of things he covered, the number of
things he was doing, the number of things he could report,
was astonishing. Their entire presidencies, that didn't cover the amount
that he'd covered in the first thirty some days of
(15:09):
his presidency. So that was fascinating, and it reminded you
of the breadth of his concerns, the breadth of his
willingness to engage, and the way in which on a
couple occasions, for example and making America healthy again, he
cited and brought up Robert F.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Kennedy Junior, and he brought up.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
Pete Hegsath, and he brought up farmers and sectuc agriculture.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Brook Rowlins jumped up to applaud.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
He was weaving things in in a way that covered
an immense amount of ground. Second, the speech really has
sort of three major segments. Segment number one was outlining
what he believed what he'd accomplished, and he began early
on by looking straight at the Democrats and saying, look,
(15:52):
I realized that even if I announced I had cured cancer,
you're not going to applaud. So they clearly at the
White House had thought through that the Democrats were going
to sulk and they're going to sit in their hands,
and they decided they would turn it into a positive
and make sure that the country understood that this was
an example of how bad the partisan split was. But
if you go through the things he talked about in
(16:13):
that opening section, first of all, the scale of it
is amazing, and he talks about an extraordinary range of things.
But second, the fact is that many of them. For example,
he mentions that we've had a huge surge in volunteering
for the army. Well, that it would be a good
thing a Democrat or Republican. The fact that young Americans
(16:35):
willing to go out and risk their lives and join
the military should be a positive thing. Democrats couldn't move.
He talked about the fact that he was in favor
of lowering taxes for middle class Americans. He went through
eliminating the tax on tips, eliminating the tax on interest
for buying a car if it's made in America, eliminating
(16:55):
the tax on Social Security payments. Now, all of those
things should have been you would thought, for the Democrats,
pretty easy things to applaud. Not a single motion. He
talked about the work that Malania had done focusing on
the whole problem of a legal revenge porn and the
kind of things that are done on the Internet. And
(17:16):
again you'd think for the Democrats, this shouldn't be that hard. Now,
he did get into what are clearly big ideological differences,
and he went through a litany that was really amazing.
Where he talked about protecting women's sports, he talked about
a whole range of things that you would think that
people could have been supportive of, and yet the fact
(17:40):
was that he was just simply not able to get
the Democrats to applaud a single thing. And the gap, frankly,
was pretty remarkable when you look at it. We're talking here,
I'm just wanting to give you a couple examples because
it was so striking to me, and we've done a
lot of this research at America's New Majority Project, which
you can say if you go to America's New Majority
(18:02):
Project dot com. So let me give you just a
couple examples. The President talks about the fact that in
his judgment, there are two genders, male and female. Well,
the American people overwhelmingly agree about seventy five percent say yes,
that's exactly right, but not the zombie Democrats question about
should boys be blocked from playing women's sports? And he
(18:22):
had a great example of a young woman who had
been very severely injured playing volleyball where there was a
male who was on the women's team and who hit
the ball so hard that it really caused profound damage.
When you talk about stopping men from playing women's sports,
the American people agree by a large margin. In fact,
one poll found sixty six percent American people think that
(18:45):
men should not be playing women's sports, but not the
zombie Democrats. When you ask the question, should English be
the official language United States? This is overwhelming eighty one
percent of Americans think so, but not the zombie Democrats.
And when you ask the question, which I think maybe
the most profound contribution that Trump makes to rebuilding American culture,
(19:07):
should merit and performance be the basis for hiring and promotion?
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Now, this is not a close call. Overwhelmingly eighty one.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
Percent of the American people think so, but not the
zombie Democrats. And I go through this list because I
was sitting there watching and I was thinking, surely at
some point they're going to break and at some point
they're going to get involved in applauding something.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
But they didn't.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
He also, frankly, had a series of kind of current
events that you don't normally think of. In a speech
to a joint session, he reported that we'd captured an
ISIS terrorist that masterminded the Abby Gata kack. Again, why
wouldn't the Democrats applaud the fact that we captured a terrorist.
He reported that he'd actually gotten a letter from President
(19:57):
Zelenski of the Ukraine. He read the letter as part
of this The letter had come in yesterday. Again, you'd
think he's now doing what supposedly the Democrats wanted him
to do. They're getting back together to try to find
a way to end the war. And it was a
very funny exchange where Trump was saying that we don't
want the war to go on, and apparently the senator
(20:18):
from Massachusetts was nodding aggressively that she didn't agree with him,
and he turnedy called her Pocahontas, which was probably not
total decorum, but even she laughed about it, and it
was not seen as overly hostile. But what you have
here was he's talking about things that are literally happening
that day.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Now.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
I don't remember that experience ever in a joint session.
(20:58):
In addition, talking about really dramatic change when you realize
that literally a month and a half ago our borders
were basically wide open. We now have in the South
the lowest rate of illegal immigration crossing the border since
the nineteen sixties. I mean, the numbers have collapsed so decisively.
(21:20):
I would never have predicted that it would happen this quickly,
but in fact, the word has gone out, don't try
to come to America. They're not going to let you in,
and you're seeing the entire pipeline dry up of illegal immigration.
He also took some very tough, very bold positions and
got very strong support from everybody except the zombie Democrats.
When he said that we should punish cop killers with
(21:42):
the death penalty, there was overwhelming support in the room
outside of the Democrats.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
When he talked about.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
The notion that he's declared war on the brutal trend
Uragua gang, which is the Venezuelan gang, but also on
gangs from places like Ol Salvador imester and the cartels
in Mexico. These are big changes moving in the right direction.
He gave I think the longest, clearest explanation of his
(22:11):
tariff policy. We've really not had a serious debate about
tariffs since early nineteen thirties, and yet for most of
American history, tariffs were very important, both in getting businesses
inside the US and in raising money. In Jefferson's second
inaugural in eighteen oh five, he points out that there
are no internal revenue agents because we make so much
(22:34):
money out of the tariffs, and as late as McKinley,
the whole strategy is raise the cost to coming into
the US, encourage people to invest in building in the US.
You'll have very very effective industries with very high salaries,
and that mostly worked. It's shocking nowadays because from the
mid nineteen thirties on, our elites taught us that you're
(22:57):
supposed to be for free trade, which by the way,
doesn't exist anywhere. As Trump pointed out, I mean if
some countries to charge four hundred percent tariffs, if the
Americans are shipping things in, well, you've already seen even
in the first weeks the impact of his tariff policy,
because you had a major auto firm announced that instead
of building their next factory in Mexico, they're now going
(23:18):
to build it in Indiana, and that's specifically because of
the tariff prophecy. So you really have a number of
things going on. He made a very important step in
saying that they're going to have an office in the
White House dedicated to rebuilding American ship building. This is
an enormous crisis. Both the Coast Guard and the Navy
have been disasters at building ships. We are way behind
(23:41):
not just China but Korea, and we could not build
ships today in an effective way in order to be
able to defend the country. It's a really big problem,
and I'm delighted to see that they're taking it very seriously.
They're working to try to make sure that we get
back into being capable of producing first rate ships and
producing large numbers of them, which is what we're going
(24:02):
to need. All of that was good, solid stuff, and
of course the Democrats sat in their hands, but what
was to me more intriguing was watching the President building
on something that Ronald Reagan had really perfected, identifying specific
people who were guests of he and Milennia sitting in
(24:24):
the audience, and the Democrats couldn't respond. So he identifies
someone that he had helped free from Russia after Biden
had failed for three and a half years, and he
has this ninety five year old mother there. Now, how
can you not applaud a ninety five year old mother?
Speaker 3 (24:44):
But they didn't.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
He had a young man who wants to go and
serve his country by going to West Point, and it
had been a very striking moment announced that the young
man had now been accepted. The commander chief has a
pretty big impact if he wants somebody to go to
work point. The young guy, of course, was thrilled. There
was a great moment, a moment of patriotism, but the
Democrats just couldn't respond. There were specific examples of mothers
(25:10):
of people who'd been killed by illegal immigrants. There was
the case of the firefighter who had been killed, who'd
thrown himself to cover his daughters and his wife during
the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, and had been killed. Each
of these and the daughters and the wife were there.
President Trump recognized them. You'd think that'd be pretty emotional,
and the Democrats sat on their hands. But the one
(25:32):
that really struck me was there was a young boy
thirteen years a cancer survivor, very courageous, whose thing which
has really given him energy and hope and the desire
to beat cancer was he really wants to become a policeman,
and apparently has had over five hundred departments that have
(25:54):
made him an honorary policeman. Well, there, right in front
of everybody, President Trump announced, and the head of the
Secret Service was right there that he was now going
to be a special agent in the Secret Service at
thirteen years of age.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
If you look at the picture.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
Of that boy's face, you look at his eyes, and
you look at how excited he is. How could you
not stand up in the PLoud When I saw it
later on television night, you really see his eyes light
up and he's so excited. If you can't applaud a
ninety five year old mother and a thirteen year old
cancer survivor, there's something really profoundly wrong.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
And I think that was a part of it.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
So you have the current events, this is what we're
doing now section, you have the human this is how
we're trying to recognize and encourage people. And then you
have a closing, which is relatively short but I think
very important, where Trump goes back to talking about a
golden age for America, that we have not really seen
(26:58):
anything yet. There are best years ahead of us that
we can have through technological advance. Now we can have
a better economy, better national security, higher incomes, a.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Better quality of life.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
And he's really painting a remarkably positive picture, which I
happen to believe it of the kind of future that
is possible with the right policies because of everything that's happening.
Even then, the Democrats couldn't be positive. So you had
this very interesting dichotomy, and this is why I think
this is such a consequential speech. On the one hand,
(27:32):
you have President Trump outlining what he is doing, outlining
how much he cares about people, and outlining a dramatically better,
more exciting, more positive future. On the other hand, you
have a Democratic party which can't function. They don't know
how to oppose him, they don't know how to work
(27:54):
with him, and in a sense, they really are zombies.
I mean they're sitting there afraid to break ever to
I'd see one, I'm applaud and then stop and realize
that they weren't supposed to be doing that, which is crazy.
The United States does not want to see a party
which is totally negative, totally out of touch. This is
what happened with the Republicans under President Franklin Donna Roosevelt.
(28:19):
As Roosevelt rolled out the New Deal, the Republicans became
negative and bitter and hostile, and they didn't really recover
from that for a generation. And I think that there's
a real danger here that the Democrats could suddenly walk
themselves into sort of a back alley where they can't
get out. People are not going to want to vote
for somebody who is always negative, always hostile, who cannot
(28:43):
share your values, and who has to consistently be with
the most radical, the largest number of strange people who
don't fit the rest of the country. And yet that's
what you're seeing begin to develop. It was a very
very interesting speech in a fascinating evening, and I think
(29:04):
the early appolling results seventy six percent of the people
who watched the speech were totally supportive. The people who
watched the speech tended to be pro Trump, So in
that sense, it is a little bit of a skewed number,
but that's always true whoever is president, whether it's Biden
and the Democrats or Trump and the Republicans, or Obama
and the Democrats, you tend to get your own partisans
(29:25):
to watch more than independence and certainly the opposition party. Nonetheless,
I don't remember ever seeing a seventy six percent approval
number for a speech like this, so I think from
President Trump's standpoint, the speech was extraordinarily well received. It
laid down a marker of what he wants to accomplish.
It outlined a set of values he's willing to fight
(29:45):
for and projected a dramatically better future that should affect
every American and offer them a better future. So I
thought it was a remarkable evening Cluston. I just had
a wonderful time Speaker Johnson's team was very good to us.
Having once been Speaker and Klister had spent eighteen years
working on the Hill, it was kind of nice to
be back in places we've been a lot, and to
(30:08):
see what was going on. I really if you have
not looked at the speech, I encourage you either to
look at a rerun of it on video or to
read the transcript, although you'll get a much stronger feeling
if you watch it on video and realize how strange
the dichotomy was of the Republicans consistently being positive and
the Democrats sitting on their hands. One final note, and
(30:30):
I don't know how much this was organized or if
it was just spontaneous, but early on, when the Democrats
would start to make noises, the Republicans would just break into.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
USA, USA, USA.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
I know from research we did is always nineteen eighty
three that the most powerful political words in America are
American nationalism. People are proud to be American, They're proud
of the country. And USA is a pretty darn powerful statement.
And the fact that the Democrats had no countervailing chant,
(31:02):
but at the same time really couldn't break into saying
USA USA was fascinating. There was also a moment very
late in the speech where the Republicans suddenly broke into
fight fight fight, picking up exactly on what Trump had
said after he was shot at Butler. Those were moments
where if you were in the room, they were galvanizing,
(31:23):
and you know, you'll never quite forget them. And I
think that it was a remarkable speech. I think it
moved the Trump agenda significantly, and I think has strengthened
dramatically both his base of support in the country at
large and his base of support in the Republican Party.
And it left the Democrats, I think, in a pretty
deep hole. And if they end up truly becoming zombie Democrats,
(31:45):
I think they could, like the Republicans in the nineteen thirties,
find themselves really non competitive for a very long time.
Neutch World is produced by English three sixty and iHeartMedia.
Executive producer is Guardnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson.
The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley.
(32:08):
Special thanks to the team at Ginglish three sixty. If
you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple
Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give
us a review so others can learn what it's all about.
Right now, listeners of newts World consign up for my
three free weekly columns at ginglishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newtsworld.
We've ended the journey of so called diversity, equity, and
inclusion policies all across the entire federal government, and indeed
the private sector and our military and our country will
be worked no longer. We believe that whether you are
(00:23):
a doctor, an accountant, a lawyer, or an air traffic
control you should be hired and promoted based on skill
and competence, not race or gender. Very important, based on merit,
and the Supreme Court, in a brave and very powerful decision,
(00:44):
has allowed us to do so.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thank you, Thank you, Paman.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
We have removed the poison of critical race theory from
our public schools, and I signed in order making it
the official policy of the United States Government that they
are are only two genders, male and female. Also signed
an executive order to bend men from playing in women's sports.
(01:11):
This will be our greatest era. With God's help, over
the next four years, we are going to lead this
nation even higher, and we are going to forge the freest,
most advanced, most dynamic, and most dominant civilization ever to
exist on the face of this earth. We are going
(01:33):
to create the highest quality of life, build the safest
and wealthiest, and the healthiest and most vital communities anywhere
in the world. We are going to conquer the vast
frontiers of science, and we're going to lead humanity into
space and plant the American flag on the planet Mars
(01:53):
and even far beyond. And through it all, we are
going to rediscover the unstoppable power of the American spirit,
and we are going to renew unlimited promise of the
American dream. Every single day, we will stand up and
we will fight, fight, fight for the country our citizens.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Believe in, and for the country our people deserve.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
My fellow Americans, get ready for an incredible future, because
the Golden Age of America has only just begun. It
will be like nothing that has ever been seen before.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
On this episode of News World, Klis and I were
guests a speaker Mike Johnson at President Donald J. Trump's
address to the Joint Session of Congress. Our seats were
directly above the House Democrats. It was an amazing place
to be. On the one hand, we could see President
Trump clearly. We were directly across from the First Lady
and her guests, and directly below us were the Democrats.
(03:10):
So I want to share with you what it was
like to be in the House Chamber on Tuesday night.
I want to start by just talking in general about
what a night like that is like. Klista and I
(03:32):
arrived early. We went to Speaker Johnson's office, where there
was a reception, and it was a very efficient way
to see a heck of a lot of congressmen and
their friends. So he chatted with folks, and I dropped
in briefly to discuss with Speaker Johnson the possibility of
the Democrats trying to be disruptive. He was totally prepared.
(03:53):
He and the Sergeant Arms had been working through it
for the previous week, and they knew that it was possible,
and they knew that they were going to handle it
in a very firm and authoritative way. So then we
wandered over to our seats. We've been assigned two seats
in Speaker Johnson's section, which is directly across from the
first Ladies area, and there's a great view of President Trump,
(04:18):
but also put us directly above the Democrats, which was
kind of fun to watch and see how they were
reacting what they were doing. So you get there early
for good reason, because it's a little bit complicated and confusing,
and there's not much space and people often go to
the wrong place and find they're in the wrong seat
and they've got to get up.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
And move around.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
So that went on for a while. Then you gradually
have the build up. The Supreme Court arrives, the diplomats arrive,
the military leadership is already there, and then the final
big build up. Of course, you have the US Senate
come in, and it's all very slow, takes a lot
of time because they're all politicians and they're all chatting
(05:00):
with each other. So it's a very effective way. Having
done this for many years, I can tell you the
amount of business you can get done before the speech
because everybody's there. There are no constituents, there's no staff,
there's no news media, and you're just talking one on
one with all sorts of folks.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
And that was going on now.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Interesting side note, going back to the French Revolution, which
happened to be very close to the way the US
House is organized. They had a dividing line down the middle,
and they had a right and a left, which is
based actually on the language of the French Revolution. I
remember at one point we were on the Republican side,
(05:40):
which if you're the president looking out, is ironically on
your left and the Democratic side is on your right.
And we were there at one point at one of
our first meetings with Ronald Reagan, all the Republicans were
gathered up, we were all sitting over on the left,
exactly where Republicans said today. He came down the middle aisle,
went over to the Democrat microphone and we're all staying.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
What is he doing?
Speaker 4 (06:04):
And he looked up for me and he said, oh, yeah,
this is where I used to be, walked over and
talked to us from the Republican microphone. Well, all these
folks are there, and you'll see some of them. For example,
Marcy Captors a great example. She's a Democratic congresswoman who
has survived miraculously in a series of close races in Toledo, Ohio.
She's always sets herself right on the center aisle so
(06:28):
that when the president comes in, she'll be able to
say hi to him and be on camera. And there's
certain people who do this. They'll go in very early
and they'll seize these seats and almost hold them like
personal property. So finally comes to the big moment and
they send out the committee to escort the president in
(06:48):
I had the strange experience when I first got elected
in nineteen seventy eight. In January of seventy nine, Jimmy Carter,
President Carter was coming to give his State of the Union.
And back then they don't do it this way now,
But back then the Home State delegation was the Escort Committee,
and so the ground rule was that the senior Democrat
(07:08):
and the senior Republican came in immediately behind the president.
Now I've been in office about thirty days, and because
I was the only Republican, I was by definition the
senior Republican. So I ended up walking in literally directly
behind the presidented States. A good friend of mine, who
had supported me, said that he fell off his couch
(07:30):
wondering how I had gotten promoted that rapidly, when of
course the whole thing was just an accident. They now
appoint the leadership from the House and the Senate, both
Democrat and Republican, and a number of Democrats did not
go to join the escort Committee, which was sort of
in their mind, I guess, a slap at President Trump.
They announced the President of States, and of course by
(07:53):
this stage, you have the Speaker of the House, who
is the actual host for the event because it's in
the House chamber. You have the Vice President in his
role as President of the Senate. So that's why those
two sit out behind the President, because the President in
fact is their guest, so he's there in a sense
subordinated to them in terms of procedure, although he's obviously
(08:16):
the President of States. So they announced the president. He
comes in, and of course you now have a ten
minute trying to get to the front because everybody wants
to shake his hand, everybody wants to say something to him,
and he's a very good at dealing with people, and
he doesn't mind it being slow. He knows the whole
country is watching, the cameras are right on him, and
(08:37):
it makes him bigger, more important. This whole time, of course,
we are all standing giving him a standing ovation for
about ten solid minutes. He comes up front, and if
you'll notice, he always hands a copy of his speech
to the Vice President and a copy of his speech
to the speaker. This is a ritual that has been
(08:57):
going on for a very long timeeeen ninety six for
the State of the Union, which is the one where
Bill Clinton says that the era of big government is
over and basically he's going to work with the House Republicans.
He comes in Al Gore, who at that time was
the Vice President and therefore President of the Senate. Al
Gore and I are sitting up there. Clinton comes in,
(09:17):
walks over, hands me an envelope which is not the speech.
I look at it for a second, I look at Gore.
We both shrug. I open it and it's a letter
that says to Speaker k Newt Gingrish from President William
Jefferson Clinton, You're right, I resign. We're both broken up, laughing.
It comes to say, oh, I gave you the wrong document.
(09:39):
Can I had that back?
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Please?
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Then he gave us the speech, and that's the speech
where he basically sold out the left and basically indicated
that he was going to work with the House Republicans
to reform welfare, balance the budget, and do all the
things we did. So the president comes in. He's now
giving both the Vice President and the speaker a copy
of his speech. He gets another round of applause, and
(10:02):
he's ready to start talking. And at that point, exactly
what we thought might happen a Democratic Congressman Green from Texas,
who had earlier filed an impeachment, who's sort of a
maverick and a wild guy, jumps up and starts yelling
at the President, and because he had been prepared, Mike
Johnson immediately gavel order and read from the Rules of
(10:26):
the House about the procedure and the requirement to operate
within the decorum of the House.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Members are directed to uphold and maintain decorum in the
House and to cease any further disruptions that you're warning.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
Well, that doesn't affect the congressman. He jumps back up
a second time.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Members are engaging in wilflin continuing breach of decorum, and
the Chair is prepared to direct the Sergeant at Arms
to restore order to the joint session.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Then he gets up a third time, and at that
point the Sergeant Arms comes over. This had all been
blanned all week. They thought this through very carefully, came over,
took him out of the.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
House, finding that members continue to engage in willful and
concerted disruption or proper decorum. The Chair now directs the
Sergeant at Arms to restore order, remove this gentleman from
the table.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Part of What it did is a signal to the
other Democrats. If you intact, act out, if you try
to do any of this, what you're going to discover
is that we're going to throw you out. You're not
going to be here very long. And interestingly, the only
other real display I saw, sitting directly above them, was
fairly late in the speech. Three of the women members
(11:44):
took off their jacket and they had on T shirts
that said resist, and they stood there for a minute together,
the three of them in their resist T shirts, and
then they voluntarily left before the sergeant arms could even
be called in. But I thought that Johnson, by reacting
so decisively and so quickly, had cut off the opposite
of what, for example, the president of Colemba University did.
(12:07):
That he had cut off any chance for any kind
of serious thing, which allowed Trump then.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
To give his speech.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
While some people at the White House have suggested he
would be about an hour long speech, which I never
thought was possible, partly because you just have applause time, etc.
He actually gave the longest speech to a joint session
of Congress in modern history. Bill Clinton had that record.
Clinton had spoken for an hour twenty eight minutes and
forty nine seconds.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
In two thousand, Trump.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Spoke for an hour thirty nine minutes in thirty two seconds,
which was almost up to his first term, when he
had spoken for an hour twenty two which was slightly
shorter than Clinton. There was a long speech, but frankly,
it was so well structured that it didn't seem all
that long. And I want to talk about that in
a minute. The fact is that overall you had this
(13:16):
very amazingly clear the lineage. You had the Republicans who
stood over and over and over, and the House Democrats
who never stood, and the Senate Democrats would stand occasionally
or applaud occasionally. But the rigidity among the House Democrats
was unbelievable. That now they had some people decide not
(13:38):
to come. I mean Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, for example,
Senator Patty Murray. But overall most of the Democrats came.
In fact, looking back, I wondered if they wouldn't have
been better off not coming now because some of them
didn't come. There were some vacancies on the Democratic side,
and I noticed after a couple of minutes there were
a group of Republicans who had decided they would go
(14:00):
sit on the Democratic side and fill up the vacancies.
So you would occasionally see people standing and applauding on
the Democratic side. They were always Republicans, they were never Democrats,
but they were over there having fun and started driving
the Democrats crazy. What I was struck by. First of all,
only talk about Trump's speech itself, and then I want
(14:21):
to talk about the Democrats' reaction, because I think they're
each worthy of considerable focus. This was a classically Trump's speech,
and I think, maybe because of the contrast with the Democrats,
the most consequential speech he's given up to now. And
I say that because I think that in this speech,
with the active help of the Democrats, Trump delineated two
(14:46):
remarkably different futures and two remarkably different styles. First of all,
if you think back to the speech and you get
a copy of it and you read through it, just
the sheer number of things he covered, the number of
things he was doing, the number of things he could report,
was astonishing. Their entire presidencies, that didn't cover the amount
that he'd covered in the first thirty some days of
(15:09):
his presidency. So that was fascinating, and it reminded you
of the breadth of his concerns, the breadth of his
willingness to engage, and the way in which on a
couple occasions, for example and making America healthy again, he
cited and brought up Robert F.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Kennedy Junior, and he brought up.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
Pete Hegsath, and he brought up farmers and sectuc agriculture.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Brook Rowlins jumped up to applaud.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
He was weaving things in in a way that covered
an immense amount of ground. Second, the speech really has
sort of three major segments. Segment number one was outlining
what he believed what he'd accomplished, and he began early
on by looking straight at the Democrats and saying, look,
(15:52):
I realized that even if I announced I had cured cancer,
you're not going to applaud. So they clearly at the
White House had thought through that the Democrats were going
to sulk and they're going to sit in their hands,
and they decided they would turn it into a positive
and make sure that the country understood that this was
an example of how bad the partisan split was. But
if you go through the things he talked about in
(16:13):
that opening section, first of all, the scale of it
is amazing, and he talks about an extraordinary range of things.
But second, the fact is that many of them. For example,
he mentions that we've had a huge surge in volunteering
for the army. Well, that it would be a good
thing a Democrat or Republican. The fact that young Americans
(16:35):
willing to go out and risk their lives and join
the military should be a positive thing. Democrats couldn't move.
He talked about the fact that he was in favor
of lowering taxes for middle class Americans. He went through
eliminating the tax on tips, eliminating the tax on interest
for buying a car if it's made in America, eliminating
(16:55):
the tax on Social Security payments. Now, all of those
things should have been you would thought, for the Democrats,
pretty easy things to applaud. Not a single motion. He
talked about the work that Malania had done focusing on
the whole problem of a legal revenge porn and the
kind of things that are done on the Internet. And
(17:16):
again you'd think for the Democrats, this shouldn't be that hard. Now,
he did get into what are clearly big ideological differences,
and he went through a litany that was really amazing.
Where he talked about protecting women's sports, he talked about
a whole range of things that you would think that
people could have been supportive of, and yet the fact
(17:40):
was that he was just simply not able to get
the Democrats to applaud a single thing. And the gap, frankly,
was pretty remarkable when you look at it. We're talking here,
I'm just wanting to give you a couple examples because
it was so striking to me, and we've done a
lot of this research at America's New Majority Project, which
you can say if you go to America's New Majority
(18:02):
Project dot com. So let me give you just a
couple examples. The President talks about the fact that in
his judgment, there are two genders, male and female. Well,
the American people overwhelmingly agree about seventy five percent say yes,
that's exactly right, but not the zombie Democrats question about
should boys be blocked from playing women's sports? And he
(18:22):
had a great example of a young woman who had
been very severely injured playing volleyball where there was a
male who was on the women's team and who hit
the ball so hard that it really caused profound damage.
When you talk about stopping men from playing women's sports,
the American people agree by a large margin. In fact,
one poll found sixty six percent American people think that
(18:45):
men should not be playing women's sports, but not the
zombie Democrats. When you ask the question, should English be
the official language United States? This is overwhelming eighty one
percent of Americans think so, but not the zombie Democrats.
And when you ask the question, which I think maybe
the most profound contribution that Trump makes to rebuilding American culture,
(19:07):
should merit and performance be the basis for hiring and promotion?
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Now, this is not a close call. Overwhelmingly eighty one.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
Percent of the American people think so, but not the
zombie Democrats. And I go through this list because I
was sitting there watching and I was thinking, surely at
some point they're going to break and at some point
they're going to get involved in applauding something.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
But they didn't.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
He also, frankly, had a series of kind of current
events that you don't normally think of. In a speech
to a joint session, he reported that we'd captured an
ISIS terrorist that masterminded the Abby Gata kack. Again, why
wouldn't the Democrats applaud the fact that we captured a terrorist.
He reported that he'd actually gotten a letter from President
(19:57):
Zelenski of the Ukraine. He read the letter as part
of this The letter had come in yesterday. Again, you'd
think he's now doing what supposedly the Democrats wanted him
to do. They're getting back together to try to find
a way to end the war. And it was a
very funny exchange where Trump was saying that we don't
want the war to go on, and apparently the senator
(20:18):
from Massachusetts was nodding aggressively that she didn't agree with him,
and he turnedy called her Pocahontas, which was probably not
total decorum, but even she laughed about it, and it
was not seen as overly hostile. But what you have
here was he's talking about things that are literally happening
that day.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Now.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
I don't remember that experience ever in a joint session.
(20:58):
In addition, talking about really dramatic change when you realize
that literally a month and a half ago our borders
were basically wide open. We now have in the South
the lowest rate of illegal immigration crossing the border since
the nineteen sixties. I mean, the numbers have collapsed so decisively.
(21:20):
I would never have predicted that it would happen this quickly,
but in fact, the word has gone out, don't try
to come to America. They're not going to let you in,
and you're seeing the entire pipeline dry up of illegal immigration.
He also took some very tough, very bold positions and
got very strong support from everybody except the zombie Democrats.
When he said that we should punish cop killers with
(21:42):
the death penalty, there was overwhelming support in the room
outside of the Democrats.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
When he talked about.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
The notion that he's declared war on the brutal trend
Uragua gang, which is the Venezuelan gang, but also on
gangs from places like Ol Salvador imester and the cartels
in Mexico. These are big changes moving in the right direction.
He gave I think the longest, clearest explanation of his
(22:11):
tariff policy. We've really not had a serious debate about
tariffs since early nineteen thirties, and yet for most of
American history, tariffs were very important, both in getting businesses
inside the US and in raising money. In Jefferson's second
inaugural in eighteen oh five, he points out that there
are no internal revenue agents because we make so much
(22:34):
money out of the tariffs, and as late as McKinley,
the whole strategy is raise the cost to coming into
the US, encourage people to invest in building in the US.
You'll have very very effective industries with very high salaries,
and that mostly worked. It's shocking nowadays because from the
mid nineteen thirties on, our elites taught us that you're
(22:57):
supposed to be for free trade, which by the way,
doesn't exist anywhere. As Trump pointed out, I mean if
some countries to charge four hundred percent tariffs, if the
Americans are shipping things in, well, you've already seen even
in the first weeks the impact of his tariff policy,
because you had a major auto firm announced that instead
of building their next factory in Mexico, they're now going
(23:18):
to build it in Indiana, and that's specifically because of
the tariff prophecy. So you really have a number of
things going on. He made a very important step in
saying that they're going to have an office in the
White House dedicated to rebuilding American ship building. This is
an enormous crisis. Both the Coast Guard and the Navy
have been disasters at building ships. We are way behind
(23:41):
not just China but Korea, and we could not build
ships today in an effective way in order to be
able to defend the country. It's a really big problem,
and I'm delighted to see that they're taking it very seriously.
They're working to try to make sure that we get
back into being capable of producing first rate ships and
producing large numbers of them, which is what we're going
(24:02):
to need. All of that was good, solid stuff, and
of course the Democrats sat in their hands, but what
was to me more intriguing was watching the President building
on something that Ronald Reagan had really perfected, identifying specific
people who were guests of he and Milennia sitting in
(24:24):
the audience, and the Democrats couldn't respond. So he identifies
someone that he had helped free from Russia after Biden
had failed for three and a half years, and he
has this ninety five year old mother there. Now, how
can you not applaud a ninety five year old mother?
Speaker 3 (24:44):
But they didn't.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
He had a young man who wants to go and
serve his country by going to West Point, and it
had been a very striking moment announced that the young
man had now been accepted. The commander chief has a
pretty big impact if he wants somebody to go to
work point. The young guy, of course, was thrilled. There
was a great moment, a moment of patriotism, but the
Democrats just couldn't respond. There were specific examples of mothers
(25:10):
of people who'd been killed by illegal immigrants. There was
the case of the firefighter who had been killed, who'd
thrown himself to cover his daughters and his wife during
the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, and had been killed. Each
of these and the daughters and the wife were there.
President Trump recognized them. You'd think that'd be pretty emotional,
and the Democrats sat on their hands. But the one
(25:32):
that really struck me was there was a young boy
thirteen years a cancer survivor, very courageous, whose thing which
has really given him energy and hope and the desire
to beat cancer was he really wants to become a policeman,
and apparently has had over five hundred departments that have
(25:54):
made him an honorary policeman. Well, there, right in front
of everybody, President Trump announced, and the head of the
Secret Service was right there that he was now going
to be a special agent in the Secret Service at
thirteen years of age.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
If you look at the picture.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
Of that boy's face, you look at his eyes, and
you look at how excited he is. How could you
not stand up in the PLoud When I saw it
later on television night, you really see his eyes light
up and he's so excited. If you can't applaud a
ninety five year old mother and a thirteen year old
cancer survivor, there's something really profoundly wrong.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
And I think that was a part of it.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
So you have the current events, this is what we're
doing now section, you have the human this is how
we're trying to recognize and encourage people. And then you
have a closing, which is relatively short but I think
very important, where Trump goes back to talking about a
golden age for America, that we have not really seen
(26:58):
anything yet. There are best years ahead of us that
we can have through technological advance. Now we can have
a better economy, better national security, higher incomes, a.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Better quality of life.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
And he's really painting a remarkably positive picture, which I
happen to believe it of the kind of future that
is possible with the right policies because of everything that's happening.
Even then, the Democrats couldn't be positive. So you had
this very interesting dichotomy, and this is why I think
this is such a consequential speech. On the one hand,
(27:32):
you have President Trump outlining what he is doing, outlining
how much he cares about people, and outlining a dramatically better,
more exciting, more positive future. On the other hand, you
have a Democratic party which can't function. They don't know
how to oppose him, they don't know how to work
(27:54):
with him, and in a sense, they really are zombies.
I mean they're sitting there afraid to break ever to
I'd see one, I'm applaud and then stop and realize
that they weren't supposed to be doing that, which is crazy.
The United States does not want to see a party
which is totally negative, totally out of touch. This is
what happened with the Republicans under President Franklin Donna Roosevelt.
(28:19):
As Roosevelt rolled out the New Deal, the Republicans became
negative and bitter and hostile, and they didn't really recover
from that for a generation. And I think that there's
a real danger here that the Democrats could suddenly walk
themselves into sort of a back alley where they can't
get out. People are not going to want to vote
for somebody who is always negative, always hostile, who cannot
(28:43):
share your values, and who has to consistently be with
the most radical, the largest number of strange people who
don't fit the rest of the country. And yet that's
what you're seeing begin to develop. It was a very
very interesting speech in a fascinating evening, and I think
(29:04):
the early appolling results seventy six percent of the people
who watched the speech were totally supportive. The people who
watched the speech tended to be pro Trump, So in
that sense, it is a little bit of a skewed number,
but that's always true whoever is president, whether it's Biden
and the Democrats or Trump and the Republicans, or Obama
and the Democrats, you tend to get your own partisans
(29:25):
to watch more than independence and certainly the opposition party. Nonetheless,
I don't remember ever seeing a seventy six percent approval
number for a speech like this, so I think from
President Trump's standpoint, the speech was extraordinarily well received. It
laid down a marker of what he wants to accomplish.
It outlined a set of values he's willing to fight
(29:45):
for and projected a dramatically better future that should affect
every American and offer them a better future. So I
thought it was a remarkable evening Cluston. I just had
a wonderful time Speaker Johnson's team was very good to us.
Having once been Speaker and Klister had spent eighteen years
working on the Hill, it was kind of nice to
be back in places we've been a lot, and to
(30:08):
see what was going on. I really if you have
not looked at the speech, I encourage you either to
look at a rerun of it on video or to
read the transcript, although you'll get a much stronger feeling
if you watch it on video and realize how strange
the dichotomy was of the Republicans consistently being positive and
the Democrats sitting on their hands. One final note, and
(30:30):
I don't know how much this was organized or if
it was just spontaneous, but early on, when the Democrats
would start to make noises, the Republicans would just break into.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
USA, USA, USA.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
I know from research we did is always nineteen eighty
three that the most powerful political words in America are
American nationalism. People are proud to be American, They're proud
of the country. And USA is a pretty darn powerful statement.
And the fact that the Democrats had no countervailing chant,
(31:02):
but at the same time really couldn't break into saying
USA USA was fascinating. There was also a moment very
late in the speech where the Republicans suddenly broke into
fight fight fight, picking up exactly on what Trump had
said after he was shot at Butler. Those were moments
where if you were in the room, they were galvanizing,
(31:23):
and you know, you'll never quite forget them. And I
think that it was a remarkable speech. I think it
moved the Trump agenda significantly, and I think has strengthened
dramatically both his base of support in the country at
large and his base of support in the Republican Party.
And it left the Democrats, I think, in a pretty
deep hole. And if they end up truly becoming zombie Democrats,
(31:45):
I think they could, like the Republicans in the nineteen thirties,
find themselves really non competitive for a very long time.
Neutch World is produced by English three sixty and iHeartMedia.
Executive producer is Guardnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson.
The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley.
(32:08):
Special thanks to the team at Ginglish three sixty. If
you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple
Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give
us a review so others can learn what it's all about.
Right now, listeners of newts World consign up for my
three free weekly columns at ginglishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newtsworld.
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