March 13, 2025 • 31 mins
Newt talks with Christian Datoc, White House Reporter for the Washington Examiner. They discuss the significant changes in the White House Press pool under the Trump administration, including the Associated Press's removal and the White House taking over the management of the press pool. Datoc highlights the tension between legacy media outlets and new media entrants, as well as the challenges faced by the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA). They also delve into the differences between the Trump and Biden administrations' media strategies, the impact of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk, and the ongoing tariff disputes with Canada and Mexico. Their conversation touches on the effectiveness of Trump's cabinet appointments and the administration's ambitious agenda.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
On this episode of Newtsworld. There is so much news
coming from the White House every single day, it's almost
hard to keep up with it all for my guests,
that is his job. I'm really pleased to welcome my guest,
Christian day Talk. He is a White House supporter for
the Washington Examiner. In fact, we're talking to him from
the White House where he's currently doing his job. He
(00:25):
previously covered the White House, Congress and campaigns for The
Daily Caller. Christian, welcome and thank you for joining me
in Newtsworld.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
No problem, Speaker Gingridge, happy to join you today.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Well, I'm curious because you've been right at the heart
of the action. You've been covering the White House for
several years. How has the White House press pool changed
in recent winks under the Trump administration.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Well, been an adventurous first seven weeks or so in
office for President Trump, and like you mentioned, there have
been major changes in the briefing room. First and foremost,
we saw the Associated Press get booted from the White
House Correspondence Association's press pool. That was, of course, because
they refused to call the Golf of America as the
(01:22):
Golf of Americans, said, referring to it as the Golf
of Mexico, the name it's had for hundreds of years
before President Trump signed that executive order. But a few
weeks after that, Caroline Levitt, the new Press Secretary, announced
that the White House itself will be taking over management
of that pool. Previously WACA or WAKA as we call
(01:43):
it here in Washington, DC, that stands for the White
House Correspondence Association, and they've administered the pool for roughly
one hundred years or so. You know, they had been
allowed to determine its own membership and therefore essentially gatekeep
the thirty any some odd news outlets that were allowed
(02:03):
into the intown pool. Now, under Levitt's direction, the White
House will be managing that pool and no one is
kicked out, but they're adding dozens, if not hundreds of
new outlets who previously were not credentialed into what they're
calling a new media seat. And new media can take
a variety of different forms. It could be print outlets,
(02:25):
it could be television, podcasts, radio, what have you. So
there is a little bit of tension right now, not
only between the White House and the Press Corps, which
I would argue is essential to a healthy democracy, a
little bit of an adversarial relationship to make sure that
everyone is doing their jobs properly. There's also tension again
between some of those legacy media outlets, whether they are
(02:49):
television or smaller publications like my own magazine, and some
of these new faces, because it's not just necessarily access
to the president, which is at stake here for those
of you outside of DC, the briefing room is actually
an incredibly small space. The room where the briefings actually
happen is larger than the workspaces themselves, the desks or
(03:12):
the bays or the radio booths where we spend the
majority of our day. So, just circling back on what
was sort of a long winded answer, Speaker Gingrich, it's
been a tumultuous time. There's been a lot of changes,
and I think there's probably going to be even more
updates on this front as new voices join and as
(03:32):
the White House sort of grapples with the realities of
trying to administer this pool.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
I think I would help our listeners, Christian if you
can sort of share with them the different kinds of pools,
the traveling pools, et cetera, and how they get organized.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Of course, So there are three main pools that cover
the president's daily movements. The first is the intown pool,
and that's responsible for going into the Oval Office when invited,
or going into the Roosevelt Room, going into these spaces
which because of the reality of physics, not every single
reporter on campus that day can get into and quite
(04:10):
literally fit while the President is delivering remarks or meeting
with leaders or other stakeholders. The next pool is the
domestic travel pool, and it's exactly what it sounds like.
Whenever the president is traveling across the country, whether for
a little R and R or to go do an
official event. There is a smaller pool of around thirteen
(04:30):
outlets which do travel. We fly on Air Force one
and don't worry, folks at home, we reimburse and pay
our way, so your taxpayer dollars aren't going to nice
seats for us. And then the third pool is the
foreign travel pool, which just like the domestic travel pool,
they fly along with the President. Sometimes, depending on how
(04:51):
big of a trip it is, we need a secondary
plane to fit everyone on board. And again you follow
the president and his daily movements so that outlets who
cannot make that trip can get an accurate view into
what is actually happening at these meetings and therefore communicate
to voters, their readership, their viewership exactly what is happening
(05:14):
on these trips. It's an essential part of newskeeping here
in DC because ultimately that's what we do. We provide
a utility to voters so that they can keep checks
and tabs on the government make sure they're operating not
only in the way they say they are operating, but
delivering on those promises to voters across the country.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
From your perspective, were there problems with the White House
Correspondence Association. I mean, obviously most of the traditional media
has been consistently OUTI Trump. Did that really show up
in any practical way or was that something that did
not affect it?
Speaker 3 (05:50):
You know, it depends on who you ask, I think,
and just for your viewers information.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
I've been a member of the WACA since twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
My out was a member even before I joined.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
I think there is sort of a disconnect with the
actual authority that WAHCA has in that room. Again, whether
that is sort of maintaining the seat chart for the
briefings or again allotting out desks and whatnot for people
to work in.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
There's a disparity between that and then.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
The practicalities of having to interface with the White House
to try and keep all these things together. And you know,
during President Biden's term in office, we saw a severe
lack of access, not just for conservative outlets or smaller outlets,
but even for what some people might consider to be
left leaning outlets, outlets like NBC News or even Politico.
(06:47):
There really was no access to the President or his
senior staff. Now that was a conscious choice by the
Biden White House to sort of keep him out of
the spotlight as much as possible.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
So been problems with.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
The WCA, But I will say I don't believe there
was never a real exclusion problem in terms of outlets
or individual reporters being allowed onto the White House grounds.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
We're gaining membership to WACA.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
It's more of a behind the scenes Beltway type of
thing on the boring administrative sides. And I do think again,
just in terms of the monumental undertaking that the White
House has thrust upon themselves, there are hundreds of outlets
in this pool. So when you're talking about the thirty
people who actually follow the president around on a daily
(07:39):
basis or travel with the president on Air Force One.
There's sort of a disconnect between what we're actually doing
here and what folks at home and cities or rural
areas across the country think we're doing.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So perception is very important.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Optics are very important, and I think that was probably
one of the greatest problems with how wads operated and
not communicating what we are all actually doing on a
daily basis to the American public. But internally, it did
seem like we were pretty unified heading into this second
Trump administration, and we had the benefit of understanding not
(08:15):
only how this president operates, but how some of his
senior aides might have interfaced with the media and give
transparency on important issues to everyday Americans.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
You had mentioned in passing the difference, but what's it
like to suddenly have a president who's giving random press
conferences all day long compared to Biden, who was hidden
virtuy all the time.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
You know, depending on the day, I'd say it's a
great thing.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Sometimes if I'm at the end of the week and
running on very little sleep, I might say, come on,
you know, don can we maybe save this one for Monday.
So it's a blessing and a curse. But I think ultimately, again,
whether you're a fan of this president and his policies
or not, the American people deserve a window into government,
and so having a president like Donald Trump who is
(09:02):
willing to speak to the press on basically a daily basis.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
On the whole, that is a huge positive.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
And certainly a big improvement compared to President Biden, who,
for all of his faults, I do think we can
all now say effectively that his messaging strategy.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Was not the right one.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Because Donald Trump is in the Oval Office now and
Joe Biden is somewhere in Delaware.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
It was sort of ironic the amount of effort the
Democrats put into talking about democracy while they refuse to
hold press conferences and then agree to what Trump is
just in the Jeffersonian sense being very democratic, small d
basically randomly answering all sorts of people. I've never seen
anything quite like it.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Frankly, I don't need to explain this to you.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
You've had your own illustrious career here in DC, and
that's just sort of the nature of the political beasts.
A candidate will say whatever they think gives them the
best advantage over their opponent, and in this case, the
Biden team clearly thought framing President Trump as a threat
to democracy or an undoing of the constitution that would
(10:07):
earn them points with voters, and it clearly it did not.
I mean, it looked like the election was much more
a referendum on the economy and the current and still
ongoing inflation than it was about President Trump's actions on
January sixth or anything that led to his impeachment surrounding Ukraine.
So that was a major miscalculation by Democrats. I'm not
(10:29):
super surprised to hear them use that type of messaging
during the campaign last year.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Probably the most innovative single thing Trump's done so far
is the Department of Government Efficiency and bringing in the
richest man in the world and Elon Musk too, sort
of add drive and energy and toughness to the system.
What's your take on the whole notion of the Department
of Government efficiency?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
My take is complex. I think if you ask folks
on either side of the aisle, there's pretty clear consensus
that the federal government has grown too bloated and we
could use a lot more oversight when it comes to
how we spend tax payer money. I mean, just look
at Bill Clinton, who balanced the budget in the nineties
(11:30):
and he cut I don't have the numbers directly in
front of me, but the hundreds, if not thousands of
federal employees in an effort to get our budget back
under control. So there is consensus in wanting to address
this issue. I do think DOJE, in their initial rollout
of how they took this project on, has made some mistakes.
(11:51):
And if you look at Elon Musk's track record, it
looks an awful lot like how he handled any of
the businesses that he has purchased or that he has launched.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
On his own.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
He's used to dealing with a significantly smaller shop than
the federal government. I think there's something like two point
four million civilian federal employees that was before DOGE began
firing some.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Of these employees.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
And they also cover a significantly wider range of issues
than let's say, Twitter formally known as X was responsible for. Right,
So there's a lot of moving parts here, and mister
Musk's general approach, which appeared to be come in, break
everything and then rebuild from the ground up. I don't
think necessarily worked as well with the federal government as
(12:38):
it would have, say a tech startup. Now there are
a lot of positive developments. I'm happy to see that
Doge and Musk will be auditing the Pentagon alongside Defense
Secretary Pete Hegsith. I think they could have sort of
foregone a lot of this criticism, at least on the left,
had they led with the Pentagon. I mean, it's our
biggest budget line item. And again there's concepsis on trying
(13:01):
to reduce American defense spending that's gone back for decades.
I mean, I'm not that old. I'm coming up on
thirty four years old. The bulk of my memory is
Post nine to eleven, and that for as long as
I can remember. Even throughout President Bush's wars and campaigns
in the Middle East, there was a pretty conscious voice
from the mid two thousands on saying, hey, we need
(13:22):
to limit this. So again, I think from a strategy standpoint,
they have made some errors, but generally, this emphasis that
Doge has placed on firing employees, identifying waste, fraud, abuse, bloat,
whatever you want to call it, shows that the Trump
administration is very serious about this issue. It wasn't just
(13:42):
lip service in the campaign. And I'm a little shocked
at some of the surprise we're seeing because you know,
the Trump administration telegraphed this for the last at least
two years, since Donald Trump announced his twenty twenty four
campaign right after the twenty twenty two mid terms. I
don't think people should be shocked by what DOGE is
(14:02):
trying to do it. But like the President said last
Wednesday or Thursday, you know, mister Musk could be using
a scalpel, but instead he's trying to go in with
the chainsaw right now. So if they hone their approach,
I see positive headlines for DOGE in the coming days
and weeks, But as it stands right now, I do
think they need to amend their methods to some degree.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah, I was surprised. I guess it was an Associated
Press analysis that went through indicated that a lot of
the claimed savings in fact didn't occur.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
So this is what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
There have been some discrepancies DOGE again because they have
sort of streamlined the workforce that they are employing.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
They don't necessarily have.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
All of the career bureaucrafts who could assist with putting
together a website monitoring all this money that they've identified
and so on their quote unquote wall of receipts, which
DOGE is updating daily and adding to and taking things
away from, been some mistakes made.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Part of that is.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Because of faulty data that they have gathered from the
federal government itself. Part of that, though, is because I
think Elon Musk and his team are prioritizing speed over
anything else right now. And again, when you're dealing in
a fast moving tech based startup world, speed is king.
But this is the United States of America and you're
(15:24):
auditing essentially the entire federal government. I think accuracy should
be more important than speed. Look, DOGE is set to
expire sometime in twenty twenty six. Of course Elon Musk
is on a special government employee contract, but he could
be extended, so they have time right now, they have
four full years to come in and.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Fully root out all of these.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Sources of financial corruption or waste, whatever you want to
quantify it as And I do think they are losing
goodwill with the American public with every single error that
they post up there.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
It might sound like I'm being too harsh.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
But again, this is what everyone's signed up for when
they join the Trump administration. They know there's going to
be media criticism. But that again, on the other side
of this conversation, I think we're forgetting about the American
voters here, and people want to see their taxpayer dollars
put to good use. They want to see the president
that they voted for carrying out the agenda he laid
(16:24):
out on the campaign trail. And so therefore I do
really want to see mister Musk try and scale back
some of the speed, scale back some of his I
guess adversarial confrontations with other members of the Trump administration,
be they the cabinet or otherwise, and work together because ultimately,
(16:44):
if there is severe political blowback to all of this.
Let's just say, hypothetically Democrats win the White House in
twenty twenty eight, they have a majority in Congress, They're
going to be able to undo a lot of work
that the Trump administration has done if they don't and
do it in a way which is one fool proof
and two proves to the American public that yes, again
(17:05):
you might not have voted for Donald Trump, but you
cannot deny that what he is doing is good for
the government and for voters moving into the future, no
matter who is in the White House or which party
is in control here in Washington, I.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Tend to agree. I think that they've got to get
more accuracy, and I think that the style that must
develop brilliantly at places like SpaceX and Texa do not
work when you're trying to move a system this big
and this complicated. But the sense of urgency and aggressiveness
probably is vital to getting anything done, because you know
(17:41):
the system's designed to avoid change. We just got to
pull back at the America's New Majority project, where by
a pretty significant margin the American people I think it
was like fifty five thirty eight. The American people would
rather make mistakes and move fast than have the whole
thing bogged down and not change anything. So that's a
mixed right. Now, let me ask you about another mixed bag,
(18:02):
which is this whole fight with Canada, which has had
I think that in the short run, it has brought
the Liberal Party back from looking like it was going
to lose by a disaster. Now I think they're basically
tied with the Conservative Party. How do you read the
whole Canadian US situation.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
I view the US Canada situation right now much in
the same way that I view a hockey game. I mean, really,
there are blows being thrown on both sides. You might
have fans in the stands booing whichever anthem they don't appreciate,
But I mean, I do think one thing is clear,
and that this tariff specifically on Canada and Mexico, which
(18:43):
the White House will say, is not necessarily about trade,
but is more about addressing immigration and fentanyl trade here
in the United States. This is having a severe negative
impact politically for the Trump administration up north. Again, if
you look at the polling, Pierre Poliev and the Conservatives
(19:03):
were slated to win a landslide in the federal elections
is coming October.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Of course, Justin Trudeau.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Resigned in January and he was just replaced by Mark
Karney over the weekend. And now again because of this
sort of renewed sense of nationalism that the tariff war
has fostered among Canadian voters, the Liberals, like you mentioned,
are neck and neck with the Conservatives. Again, it's a
crazy swing and they now in some polls have their
(19:30):
first lead over the Conservatives since twenty twenty one. I'm
not so sure this will hold through October when those
Canadian elections take place. But I think just sort of
the wonky implementation of these tariffs, with President Trump signaling
one thing publicly and then carving out some exemptions, this
(19:51):
is fostered like real resentment of America with one of
our closest allies there are, i think our second biggest
trade partner. They've fought in every single war over the
last century that the United States has taken part in
alongside of us. It's a pretty seismic shift in the
paradigm in how North America operates. I mean, let's not
(20:13):
forget twenty nineteen, Donald Trump throws out NAFTA and brings
US MCA into being on all fronts. You know, this
was a good idea. It's pushing more free trade, it's
trying to incentivize some of this cross border manufacturing to
maybe come settle in the United States. And all parties involved,
(20:36):
including here in the United States, they didn't get exactly
what they asked for, So you can make the argument
that it wasn't unfairly tilted towards the United States. You
flash forward six years and now USMCA is basically being
thrown out directly out the window. I'm just not really
sure what exactly the President thinks he can get out
(20:59):
of Canada Mexico beyond the concessions they've already made to
address border crossings, which again have dropped significantly from the
historic highs of the Biden administration to double digit border crossings.
I want to say in January, it's an interesting dynamic.
I'm not so sure Mark Carney will necessarily publicly continue
(21:22):
the same line that Justin Trudeau did against Trump, and
that might sort of ease some of the resentment among
Canadian voters. But as it stands right now, the Canadian
liberals are by far the biggest beneficiaries of this trade war,
not necessarily US manufacturing and production.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
How do you interpret the entire strategy on tariffs?
Speaker 3 (21:59):
That's an interesting quest, and I wish I had an
economics degree, because as a dumb, young reporter, I feel
very ill versed to address this. But let me lay
it out as I understand it. The driving force behind
Donald Trump's tariff agenda lies with a man named Peter Navarro.
He's currently the senior Counselor to the President for Manufacturing
(22:20):
and Trade. He worked in the first Trump administration and
was a professor at Stanford for many years before that.
He's looking at the global economy as it falls out
of the nineteen nineties when we started to see a
lot of businesses go overseas to China specifically, and he's saying,
what we've been doing for the past thirty to forty
years is hurting Americans at home. So these tariffs are
(22:43):
meant to one offset US trade deficits with our top
trading partners, and two sort of reforge the global economy,
to put the United States back at the center of
it as a production capital, not necessarily just as a
consumption capital. But we want to be making things here
in America. We've heard about this for two administrations, two
(23:06):
consecutive administrations now before President Trump's second term in office.
We want to make things in America, especially things that
the federal government is purchasing. So when it comes to
the reciprocity of this entire agenda, I think this is
a good development. And I say we, I mean the
United States of America and the Trump administration. They're not
(23:28):
going to be putting punitive tariffs trying to squeeze trade
away from some of these other countries. They're just trying
to offset the same things that other countries charge United
States to export.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
To those countries.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
So they say, oh, if you charge us ten percent
on automobiles, we're going to do the same to you.
It's meant to lower all of these barrier taxes and
make sure that again there's a free flow of goods
across the entire global community. I think the reciprocal tariff
agenda is a much more thought out and a better
(24:01):
implemented plan than these threats that we've seen regarding Canada
or Mexico or China on fentanyl.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Again, it's early days.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
We're going to get additional implementation next month, and then
again the implementation of the twenty five percent tariffs on
seal and aluminum. The markets will react, We'll hear more
from economists. I think this leg of the second Trump
terms economic platform is one that they will stick with.
It's up to the other countries really to decide if
(24:31):
they want to play ball or not, or if they
want to go back to the old system, which again
saw the United States suffer the most.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
From your perspective, Have you been surprised by just a
sheer scale of what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Ah, I certainly am surprised by the scale on tariffs.
I'm surprised on the scale of just about everything, because
if you go back and you actually track what President
Trump was saying he was going to do on day
one in office, I don't know if you can get
a notebook that has enough pages in it to keep
track of everything. And he didn't do everything on day one,
but they're pretty quickly working down this itemized list and
(25:09):
addressing virtually every issue they can think of. I mean, again,
the economy is one, immigration is one. There's some of
these culture war issues which really mobilized his base even
back in the twenty sixteen campaign, that he has addressed
via executive order. I think the biggest outstanding issue is
going to be up to Congress to get his tax
(25:30):
cuts vehicle through the House in the Senate, and then
after that, who knows what's going to come. So it
feels like it's been a fire hose which the media
is trying to cover up for the last nearly two
months now, and again I say we shouldn't have been
surprised because This isn't our first rodeo with Donald Trump,
but I think even some folks in the White House
(25:52):
are a little surprised by how much they've taken on
in these early days.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah, and I think it's so interesting to see if
they can sustain it. My hunches they can because of
you look at the cabin that he's appointed. These are
all really strong personalities.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah, without a doubt across the board.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
I think personally, my favorite pick so far has got
to be Brooke Rawlins at USDA because we don't talk
about agriculture and food prices a lot. Well, I guess
we might in the days following Biden inflation and whatnot,
but she is someone who is truly a policy expert.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
I mean she was there.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
She was the director of the Domestic Policy Council during
Trump's first term in office, and she's really sort of
hit the ground running. She was in the mid tier
in terms of confirmations this second time around. She wasn't
during the first two weeks or anything like that like
the National Security team was. But when you look at
what's happening right now in terms of inflated egg prices
(26:50):
following the bird flu epidemic, which the country has been
grappling with. She had a concrete plan. They came out
and they said, we're going to subsidize the purchase of
chickens and eggs from overseas to supplement our dwindled population
right now. And it's like, oh, okay again, even if
you don't agree with this president on the issues and
you are raising the topic of elevated egg prices, that's
(27:13):
a real answer there. And it didn't take weeks and
months to get it. It happened in pretty rapid succession.
And I could give you examples from a number of
other agencies, but it does seem like the team that
is in place right now is unified around the mission
that this White House is trying to achieve, and they're
going to be working double time, triple time over time
(27:36):
to make sure that they deliver on that.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
I'm very close to Brooke and I can't imagine anybody
better At agriculture. She was the statewide for each president
in Texas in high school. She actually majored in agricultural
economics at Texas A and M. Her family has a ranch.
I mean, she founded the Texas Public Policy Foundation. So
(28:00):
there's a pretty animate knowledge about issues in general, and
I agree with you. I think she's very striking as
somebody who can get things done. But I look at
that whole cabinet and virtually everybody there is very strumming.
You compare them to Biden's cabinet, and there's just no
comparison in terms of what they've achieved in the real world.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
There's a lot you can say about what this cabinet
has done in the private sphere versus President Biden's cabinet,
which did seem to be primarily career bureaucrats, and I
think that's just sort of the nature of the beasts
these days. There is significant appetite again on both sides
of the aisle, for people who come from outside of
(28:41):
government coming in and taking control of a system which everyone,
regardless of your political ideology, feels pretty confident that things
have gotten out of hand. So it's a very stark contrast.
Like you mentioned, who knows how long each of these
secretaries day on. Of course, turnover is a reality for
(29:03):
any presidential administration.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
I do think it's kind of funny.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Also, you know, we heard a lot from Vice President
Kamala Harris about how she pledged to reach across the
aisle and put a Republican in her cabinet, which, for
the record, used to not be an outland just thing
to say. I mean, we used to have bipartisanship within
presidential administrations not too long ago. But now Donald Trump
has a former Democrat running HHS and Robert F.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
So things certainly seem to come full circle. And I'm
interested to see what this team can achieve and how
long they will stick together.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
His director of National Intelligence was a Democratic candidate for president.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
I almost forgot about Saulcy Gabbard.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yeah, you know, it's clear to me that you really
are paying close attention. Of course, the White House now
has got to be one of the most intense places
for a reporter to be covering. It's a lifetime education
for you, and I really want to thank you for
joining me. Our listeners can read your reporting at Warshton
Examiner dot com, and I think after listening to this
(30:07):
they'll realize that you write from a real depth of knowledge.
That's very, very impressive.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Well, I appreciate that, speaker, Gingrish, I was happy to
join you today.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Thank you to my guests, Christian daytalk you can get
a link to his reporting on our show page at
newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is produced by gingridh three sixty
and iHeartMedia. Our executive producers Guarnsei Sloan. Our researcher is
Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by
Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at Gingrishtree sixty.
(30:39):
If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to
Apple Podcasts 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 Newtsworld consigner for my
three free weekly columns at gingristree sixty dot com slash newsletter.
I'm Newt Gingrich.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
This is Newtsworld
On this episode of Newtsworld. There is so much news
coming from the White House every single day, it's almost
hard to keep up with it all for my guests,
that is his job. I'm really pleased to welcome my guest,
Christian day Talk. He is a White House supporter for
the Washington Examiner. In fact, we're talking to him from
the White House where he's currently doing his job. He
(00:25):
previously covered the White House, Congress and campaigns for The
Daily Caller. Christian, welcome and thank you for joining me
in Newtsworld.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
No problem, Speaker Gingridge, happy to join you today.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Well, I'm curious because you've been right at the heart
of the action. You've been covering the White House for
several years. How has the White House press pool changed
in recent winks under the Trump administration.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Well, been an adventurous first seven weeks or so in
office for President Trump, and like you mentioned, there have
been major changes in the briefing room. First and foremost,
we saw the Associated Press get booted from the White
House Correspondence Association's press pool. That was, of course, because
they refused to call the Golf of America as the
(01:22):
Golf of Americans, said, referring to it as the Golf
of Mexico, the name it's had for hundreds of years
before President Trump signed that executive order. But a few
weeks after that, Caroline Levitt, the new Press Secretary, announced
that the White House itself will be taking over management
of that pool. Previously WACA or WAKA as we call
(01:43):
it here in Washington, DC, that stands for the White
House Correspondence Association, and they've administered the pool for roughly
one hundred years or so. You know, they had been
allowed to determine its own membership and therefore essentially gatekeep
the thirty any some odd news outlets that were allowed
(02:03):
into the intown pool. Now, under Levitt's direction, the White
House will be managing that pool and no one is
kicked out, but they're adding dozens, if not hundreds of
new outlets who previously were not credentialed into what they're
calling a new media seat. And new media can take
a variety of different forms. It could be print outlets,
(02:25):
it could be television, podcasts, radio, what have you. So
there is a little bit of tension right now, not
only between the White House and the Press Corps, which
I would argue is essential to a healthy democracy, a
little bit of an adversarial relationship to make sure that
everyone is doing their jobs properly. There's also tension again
between some of those legacy media outlets, whether they are
(02:49):
television or smaller publications like my own magazine, and some
of these new faces, because it's not just necessarily access
to the president, which is at stake here for those
of you outside of DC, the briefing room is actually
an incredibly small space. The room where the briefings actually
happen is larger than the workspaces themselves, the desks or
(03:12):
the bays or the radio booths where we spend the
majority of our day. So, just circling back on what
was sort of a long winded answer, Speaker Gingrich, it's
been a tumultuous time. There's been a lot of changes,
and I think there's probably going to be even more
updates on this front as new voices join and as
(03:32):
the White House sort of grapples with the realities of
trying to administer this pool.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
I think I would help our listeners, Christian if you
can sort of share with them the different kinds of pools,
the traveling pools, et cetera, and how they get organized.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Of course, So there are three main pools that cover
the president's daily movements. The first is the intown pool,
and that's responsible for going into the Oval Office when invited,
or going into the Roosevelt Room, going into these spaces
which because of the reality of physics, not every single
reporter on campus that day can get into and quite
(04:10):
literally fit while the President is delivering remarks or meeting
with leaders or other stakeholders. The next pool is the
domestic travel pool, and it's exactly what it sounds like.
Whenever the president is traveling across the country, whether for
a little R and R or to go do an
official event. There is a smaller pool of around thirteen
(04:30):
outlets which do travel. We fly on Air Force one
and don't worry, folks at home, we reimburse and pay
our way, so your taxpayer dollars aren't going to nice
seats for us. And then the third pool is the
foreign travel pool, which just like the domestic travel pool,
they fly along with the President. Sometimes, depending on how
(04:51):
big of a trip it is, we need a secondary
plane to fit everyone on board. And again you follow
the president and his daily movements so that outlets who
cannot make that trip can get an accurate view into
what is actually happening at these meetings and therefore communicate
to voters, their readership, their viewership exactly what is happening
(05:14):
on these trips. It's an essential part of newskeeping here
in DC because ultimately that's what we do. We provide
a utility to voters so that they can keep checks
and tabs on the government make sure they're operating not
only in the way they say they are operating, but
delivering on those promises to voters across the country.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
From your perspective, were there problems with the White House
Correspondence Association. I mean, obviously most of the traditional media
has been consistently OUTI Trump. Did that really show up
in any practical way or was that something that did
not affect it?
Speaker 3 (05:50):
You know, it depends on who you ask, I think,
and just for your viewers information.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
I've been a member of the WACA since twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
My out was a member even before I joined.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
I think there is sort of a disconnect with the
actual authority that WAHCA has in that room. Again, whether
that is sort of maintaining the seat chart for the
briefings or again allotting out desks and whatnot for people
to work in.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
There's a disparity between that and then.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
The practicalities of having to interface with the White House
to try and keep all these things together. And you know,
during President Biden's term in office, we saw a severe
lack of access, not just for conservative outlets or smaller outlets,
but even for what some people might consider to be
left leaning outlets, outlets like NBC News or even Politico.
(06:47):
There really was no access to the President or his
senior staff. Now that was a conscious choice by the
Biden White House to sort of keep him out of
the spotlight as much as possible.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
So been problems with.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
The WCA, But I will say I don't believe there
was never a real exclusion problem in terms of outlets
or individual reporters being allowed onto the White House grounds.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
We're gaining membership to WACA.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
It's more of a behind the scenes Beltway type of
thing on the boring administrative sides. And I do think again,
just in terms of the monumental undertaking that the White
House has thrust upon themselves, there are hundreds of outlets
in this pool. So when you're talking about the thirty
people who actually follow the president around on a daily
(07:39):
basis or travel with the president on Air Force One.
There's sort of a disconnect between what we're actually doing
here and what folks at home and cities or rural
areas across the country think we're doing.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So perception is very important.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Optics are very important, and I think that was probably
one of the greatest problems with how wads operated and
not communicating what we are all actually doing on a
daily basis to the American public. But internally, it did
seem like we were pretty unified heading into this second
Trump administration, and we had the benefit of understanding not
(08:15):
only how this president operates, but how some of his
senior aides might have interfaced with the media and give
transparency on important issues to everyday Americans.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
You had mentioned in passing the difference, but what's it
like to suddenly have a president who's giving random press
conferences all day long compared to Biden, who was hidden
virtuy all the time.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
You know, depending on the day, I'd say it's a
great thing.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Sometimes if I'm at the end of the week and
running on very little sleep, I might say, come on,
you know, don can we maybe save this one for Monday.
So it's a blessing and a curse. But I think ultimately, again,
whether you're a fan of this president and his policies
or not, the American people deserve a window into government,
and so having a president like Donald Trump who is
(09:02):
willing to speak to the press on basically a daily basis.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
On the whole, that is a huge positive.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
And certainly a big improvement compared to President Biden, who,
for all of his faults, I do think we can
all now say effectively that his messaging strategy.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Was not the right one.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Because Donald Trump is in the Oval Office now and
Joe Biden is somewhere in Delaware.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
It was sort of ironic the amount of effort the
Democrats put into talking about democracy while they refuse to
hold press conferences and then agree to what Trump is
just in the Jeffersonian sense being very democratic, small d
basically randomly answering all sorts of people. I've never seen
anything quite like it.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Frankly, I don't need to explain this to you.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
You've had your own illustrious career here in DC, and
that's just sort of the nature of the political beasts.
A candidate will say whatever they think gives them the
best advantage over their opponent, and in this case, the
Biden team clearly thought framing President Trump as a threat
to democracy or an undoing of the constitution that would
(10:07):
earn them points with voters, and it clearly it did not.
I mean, it looked like the election was much more
a referendum on the economy and the current and still
ongoing inflation than it was about President Trump's actions on
January sixth or anything that led to his impeachment surrounding Ukraine.
So that was a major miscalculation by Democrats. I'm not
(10:29):
super surprised to hear them use that type of messaging
during the campaign last year.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Probably the most innovative single thing Trump's done so far
is the Department of Government Efficiency and bringing in the
richest man in the world and Elon Musk too, sort
of add drive and energy and toughness to the system.
What's your take on the whole notion of the Department
of Government efficiency?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
My take is complex. I think if you ask folks
on either side of the aisle, there's pretty clear consensus
that the federal government has grown too bloated and we
could use a lot more oversight when it comes to
how we spend tax payer money. I mean, just look
at Bill Clinton, who balanced the budget in the nineties
(11:30):
and he cut I don't have the numbers directly in
front of me, but the hundreds, if not thousands of
federal employees in an effort to get our budget back
under control. So there is consensus in wanting to address
this issue. I do think DOJE, in their initial rollout
of how they took this project on, has made some mistakes.
(11:51):
And if you look at Elon Musk's track record, it
looks an awful lot like how he handled any of
the businesses that he has purchased or that he has launched.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
On his own.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
He's used to dealing with a significantly smaller shop than
the federal government. I think there's something like two point
four million civilian federal employees that was before DOGE began
firing some.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Of these employees.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
And they also cover a significantly wider range of issues
than let's say, Twitter formally known as X was responsible for. Right,
So there's a lot of moving parts here, and mister
Musk's general approach, which appeared to be come in, break
everything and then rebuild from the ground up. I don't
think necessarily worked as well with the federal government as
(12:38):
it would have, say a tech startup. Now there are
a lot of positive developments. I'm happy to see that
Doge and Musk will be auditing the Pentagon alongside Defense
Secretary Pete Hegsith. I think they could have sort of
foregone a lot of this criticism, at least on the left,
had they led with the Pentagon. I mean, it's our
biggest budget line item. And again there's concepsis on trying
(13:01):
to reduce American defense spending that's gone back for decades.
I mean, I'm not that old. I'm coming up on
thirty four years old. The bulk of my memory is
Post nine to eleven, and that for as long as
I can remember. Even throughout President Bush's wars and campaigns
in the Middle East, there was a pretty conscious voice
from the mid two thousands on saying, hey, we need
(13:22):
to limit this. So again, I think from a strategy standpoint,
they have made some errors, but generally, this emphasis that
Doge has placed on firing employees, identifying waste, fraud, abuse, bloat,
whatever you want to call it, shows that the Trump
administration is very serious about this issue. It wasn't just
(13:42):
lip service in the campaign. And I'm a little shocked
at some of the surprise we're seeing because you know,
the Trump administration telegraphed this for the last at least
two years, since Donald Trump announced his twenty twenty four
campaign right after the twenty twenty two mid terms. I
don't think people should be shocked by what DOGE is
(14:02):
trying to do it. But like the President said last
Wednesday or Thursday, you know, mister Musk could be using
a scalpel, but instead he's trying to go in with
the chainsaw right now. So if they hone their approach,
I see positive headlines for DOGE in the coming days
and weeks, But as it stands right now, I do
think they need to amend their methods to some degree.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah, I was surprised. I guess it was an Associated
Press analysis that went through indicated that a lot of
the claimed savings in fact didn't occur.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
So this is what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
There have been some discrepancies DOGE again because they have
sort of streamlined the workforce that they are employing.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
They don't necessarily have.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
All of the career bureaucrafts who could assist with putting
together a website monitoring all this money that they've identified
and so on their quote unquote wall of receipts, which
DOGE is updating daily and adding to and taking things
away from, been some mistakes made.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Part of that is.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Because of faulty data that they have gathered from the
federal government itself. Part of that, though, is because I
think Elon Musk and his team are prioritizing speed over
anything else right now. And again, when you're dealing in
a fast moving tech based startup world, speed is king.
But this is the United States of America and you're
(15:24):
auditing essentially the entire federal government. I think accuracy should
be more important than speed. Look, DOGE is set to
expire sometime in twenty twenty six. Of course Elon Musk
is on a special government employee contract, but he could
be extended, so they have time right now, they have
four full years to come in and.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Fully root out all of these.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Sources of financial corruption or waste, whatever you want to
quantify it as And I do think they are losing
goodwill with the American public with every single error that
they post up there.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
It might sound like I'm being too harsh.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
But again, this is what everyone's signed up for when
they join the Trump administration. They know there's going to
be media criticism. But that again, on the other side
of this conversation, I think we're forgetting about the American
voters here, and people want to see their taxpayer dollars
put to good use. They want to see the president
that they voted for carrying out the agenda he laid
(16:24):
out on the campaign trail. And so therefore I do
really want to see mister Musk try and scale back
some of the speed, scale back some of his I
guess adversarial confrontations with other members of the Trump administration,
be they the cabinet or otherwise, and work together because ultimately,
(16:44):
if there is severe political blowback to all of this.
Let's just say, hypothetically Democrats win the White House in
twenty twenty eight, they have a majority in Congress, They're
going to be able to undo a lot of work
that the Trump administration has done if they don't and
do it in a way which is one fool proof
and two proves to the American public that yes, again
(17:05):
you might not have voted for Donald Trump, but you
cannot deny that what he is doing is good for
the government and for voters moving into the future, no
matter who is in the White House or which party
is in control here in Washington, I.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Tend to agree. I think that they've got to get
more accuracy, and I think that the style that must
develop brilliantly at places like SpaceX and Texa do not
work when you're trying to move a system this big
and this complicated. But the sense of urgency and aggressiveness
probably is vital to getting anything done, because you know
(17:41):
the system's designed to avoid change. We just got to
pull back at the America's New Majority project, where by
a pretty significant margin the American people I think it
was like fifty five thirty eight. The American people would
rather make mistakes and move fast than have the whole
thing bogged down and not change anything. So that's a
mixed right. Now, let me ask you about another mixed bag,
(18:02):
which is this whole fight with Canada, which has had
I think that in the short run, it has brought
the Liberal Party back from looking like it was going
to lose by a disaster. Now I think they're basically
tied with the Conservative Party. How do you read the
whole Canadian US situation.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
I view the US Canada situation right now much in
the same way that I view a hockey game. I mean, really,
there are blows being thrown on both sides. You might
have fans in the stands booing whichever anthem they don't appreciate,
But I mean, I do think one thing is clear,
and that this tariff specifically on Canada and Mexico, which
(18:43):
the White House will say, is not necessarily about trade,
but is more about addressing immigration and fentanyl trade here
in the United States. This is having a severe negative
impact politically for the Trump administration up north. Again, if
you look at the polling, Pierre Poliev and the Conservatives
(19:03):
were slated to win a landslide in the federal elections
is coming October.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Of course, Justin Trudeau.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Resigned in January and he was just replaced by Mark
Karney over the weekend. And now again because of this
sort of renewed sense of nationalism that the tariff war
has fostered among Canadian voters, the Liberals, like you mentioned,
are neck and neck with the Conservatives. Again, it's a
crazy swing and they now in some polls have their
(19:30):
first lead over the Conservatives since twenty twenty one. I'm
not so sure this will hold through October when those
Canadian elections take place. But I think just sort of
the wonky implementation of these tariffs, with President Trump signaling
one thing publicly and then carving out some exemptions, this
(19:51):
is fostered like real resentment of America with one of
our closest allies there are, i think our second biggest
trade partner. They've fought in every single war over the
last century that the United States has taken part in
alongside of us. It's a pretty seismic shift in the
paradigm in how North America operates. I mean, let's not
(20:13):
forget twenty nineteen, Donald Trump throws out NAFTA and brings
US MCA into being on all fronts. You know, this
was a good idea. It's pushing more free trade, it's
trying to incentivize some of this cross border manufacturing to
maybe come settle in the United States. And all parties involved,
(20:36):
including here in the United States, they didn't get exactly
what they asked for, So you can make the argument
that it wasn't unfairly tilted towards the United States. You
flash forward six years and now USMCA is basically being
thrown out directly out the window. I'm just not really
sure what exactly the President thinks he can get out
(20:59):
of Canada Mexico beyond the concessions they've already made to
address border crossings, which again have dropped significantly from the
historic highs of the Biden administration to double digit border crossings.
I want to say in January, it's an interesting dynamic.
I'm not so sure Mark Carney will necessarily publicly continue
(21:22):
the same line that Justin Trudeau did against Trump, and
that might sort of ease some of the resentment among
Canadian voters. But as it stands right now, the Canadian
liberals are by far the biggest beneficiaries of this trade war,
not necessarily US manufacturing and production.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
How do you interpret the entire strategy on tariffs?
Speaker 3 (21:59):
That's an interesting quest, and I wish I had an
economics degree, because as a dumb, young reporter, I feel
very ill versed to address this. But let me lay
it out as I understand it. The driving force behind
Donald Trump's tariff agenda lies with a man named Peter Navarro.
He's currently the senior Counselor to the President for Manufacturing
(22:20):
and Trade. He worked in the first Trump administration and
was a professor at Stanford for many years before that.
He's looking at the global economy as it falls out
of the nineteen nineties when we started to see a
lot of businesses go overseas to China specifically, and he's saying,
what we've been doing for the past thirty to forty
years is hurting Americans at home. So these tariffs are
(22:43):
meant to one offset US trade deficits with our top
trading partners, and two sort of reforge the global economy,
to put the United States back at the center of
it as a production capital, not necessarily just as a
consumption capital. But we want to be making things here
in America. We've heard about this for two administrations, two
(23:06):
consecutive administrations now before President Trump's second term in office.
We want to make things in America, especially things that
the federal government is purchasing. So when it comes to
the reciprocity of this entire agenda, I think this is
a good development. And I say we, I mean the
United States of America and the Trump administration. They're not
(23:28):
going to be putting punitive tariffs trying to squeeze trade
away from some of these other countries. They're just trying
to offset the same things that other countries charge United
States to export.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
To those countries.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
So they say, oh, if you charge us ten percent
on automobiles, we're going to do the same to you.
It's meant to lower all of these barrier taxes and
make sure that again there's a free flow of goods
across the entire global community. I think the reciprocal tariff
agenda is a much more thought out and a better
(24:01):
implemented plan than these threats that we've seen regarding Canada
or Mexico or China on fentanyl.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Again, it's early days.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
We're going to get additional implementation next month, and then
again the implementation of the twenty five percent tariffs on
seal and aluminum. The markets will react, We'll hear more
from economists. I think this leg of the second Trump
terms economic platform is one that they will stick with.
It's up to the other countries really to decide if
(24:31):
they want to play ball or not, or if they
want to go back to the old system, which again
saw the United States suffer the most.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
From your perspective, Have you been surprised by just a
sheer scale of what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Ah, I certainly am surprised by the scale on tariffs.
I'm surprised on the scale of just about everything, because
if you go back and you actually track what President
Trump was saying he was going to do on day
one in office, I don't know if you can get
a notebook that has enough pages in it to keep
track of everything. And he didn't do everything on day one,
but they're pretty quickly working down this itemized list and
(25:09):
addressing virtually every issue they can think of. I mean, again,
the economy is one, immigration is one. There's some of
these culture war issues which really mobilized his base even
back in the twenty sixteen campaign, that he has addressed
via executive order. I think the biggest outstanding issue is
going to be up to Congress to get his tax
(25:30):
cuts vehicle through the House in the Senate, and then
after that, who knows what's going to come. So it
feels like it's been a fire hose which the media
is trying to cover up for the last nearly two
months now, and again I say we shouldn't have been
surprised because This isn't our first rodeo with Donald Trump,
but I think even some folks in the White House
(25:52):
are a little surprised by how much they've taken on
in these early days.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah, and I think it's so interesting to see if
they can sustain it. My hunches they can because of
you look at the cabin that he's appointed. These are
all really strong personalities.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah, without a doubt across the board.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
I think personally, my favorite pick so far has got
to be Brooke Rawlins at USDA because we don't talk
about agriculture and food prices a lot. Well, I guess
we might in the days following Biden inflation and whatnot,
but she is someone who is truly a policy expert.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
I mean she was there.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
She was the director of the Domestic Policy Council during
Trump's first term in office, and she's really sort of
hit the ground running. She was in the mid tier
in terms of confirmations this second time around. She wasn't
during the first two weeks or anything like that like
the National Security team was. But when you look at
what's happening right now in terms of inflated egg prices
(26:50):
following the bird flu epidemic, which the country has been
grappling with. She had a concrete plan. They came out
and they said, we're going to subsidize the purchase of
chickens and eggs from overseas to supplement our dwindled population
right now. And it's like, oh, okay again, even if
you don't agree with this president on the issues and
you are raising the topic of elevated egg prices, that's
(27:13):
a real answer there. And it didn't take weeks and
months to get it. It happened in pretty rapid succession.
And I could give you examples from a number of
other agencies, but it does seem like the team that
is in place right now is unified around the mission
that this White House is trying to achieve, and they're
going to be working double time, triple time over time
(27:36):
to make sure that they deliver on that.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
I'm very close to Brooke and I can't imagine anybody
better At agriculture. She was the statewide for each president
in Texas in high school. She actually majored in agricultural
economics at Texas A and M. Her family has a ranch.
I mean, she founded the Texas Public Policy Foundation. So
(28:00):
there's a pretty animate knowledge about issues in general, and
I agree with you. I think she's very striking as
somebody who can get things done. But I look at
that whole cabinet and virtually everybody there is very strumming.
You compare them to Biden's cabinet, and there's just no
comparison in terms of what they've achieved in the real world.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
There's a lot you can say about what this cabinet
has done in the private sphere versus President Biden's cabinet,
which did seem to be primarily career bureaucrats, and I
think that's just sort of the nature of the beasts
these days. There is significant appetite again on both sides
of the aisle, for people who come from outside of
(28:41):
government coming in and taking control of a system which everyone,
regardless of your political ideology, feels pretty confident that things
have gotten out of hand. So it's a very stark contrast.
Like you mentioned, who knows how long each of these
secretaries day on. Of course, turnover is a reality for
(29:03):
any presidential administration.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
I do think it's kind of funny.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Also, you know, we heard a lot from Vice President
Kamala Harris about how she pledged to reach across the
aisle and put a Republican in her cabinet, which, for
the record, used to not be an outland just thing
to say. I mean, we used to have bipartisanship within
presidential administrations not too long ago. But now Donald Trump
has a former Democrat running HHS and Robert F.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
So things certainly seem to come full circle. And I'm
interested to see what this team can achieve and how
long they will stick together.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
His director of National Intelligence was a Democratic candidate for president.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
I almost forgot about Saulcy Gabbard.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yeah, you know, it's clear to me that you really
are paying close attention. Of course, the White House now
has got to be one of the most intense places
for a reporter to be covering. It's a lifetime education
for you, and I really want to thank you for
joining me. Our listeners can read your reporting at Warshton
Examiner dot com, and I think after listening to this
(30:07):
they'll realize that you write from a real depth of knowledge.
That's very, very impressive.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Well, I appreciate that, speaker, Gingrish, I was happy to
join you today.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Thank you to my guests, Christian daytalk you can get
a link to his reporting on our show page at
newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is produced by gingridh three sixty
and iHeartMedia. Our executive producers Guarnsei Sloan. Our researcher is
Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by
Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at Gingrishtree sixty.
(30:39):
If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to
Apple Podcasts 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 Newtsworld consigner for my
three free weekly columns at gingristree sixty dot com slash newsletter.
I'm Newt Gingrich.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
This is Newtsworld
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