June 5, 2025 • 52 mins
In this episode, Lisa interviews former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich about Donald Trump’s political legacy, the challenges facing the Democratic Party, and the current state of American politics. Gingrich discusses Trump’s unique connection with everyday Americans, his evolution after surviving an assassination attempt, and his enduring influence on the Republican Party.
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Truth with Lisa Booth, where we cut.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Through the noise to get to the heart of what matters,
to get to the heart of what's shaping or nation today.
We have the great honor to have former Speaker new Gingridge,
a political titan and also the author of the new
book Trump's Triumph, America's Greatest Comeback, on the show. We're
going to get to a lot a lot to unpack
(00:23):
with Speaker new Gingridge, because basically he's brilliant well impact
why President Trump remains one of the most misunderstood figures
in modern politics. We'll also dive into the details of
the Big Beautiful Bill. We know it's big, but is
it beautiful?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Willso tackle some of.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
The pressing issues like the challenges of cutting government spending
and whether Speaker Johnson a majority leader thoon or moving
fast enough to deliver results for you, the American people.
We also talk about Joe Biden's mental decline, How much
to Congress focus on that, what should they do about it?
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Moving forward? We have hearings.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
We'll also get into the rising political violence on the left.
Has he seen the political left be so dangerous before?
Speaker 1 (01:11):
What's the impact of that? On the country.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
We'll also dig into the Democrats' struggles and the future
of the Republican Party and lastly, and maybe most importantly,
how will history remember President Trump?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
So stay tuned for.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
This very thoughtful conversation with Speaker new Gingrich, who's been
very generous with his time. It's an honor to have
him on, and trust me, you're going to love this interview.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
We'll speak her New Gingrich.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
It's always such an honor to have you on the show.
You know, I was telling you before we got started. Obviously,
there is an influx of information in today's world, and
most of it's not correct, and most people are letting
their hair on fire when they shouldn't be. So it's
always just great to to hear what you have to
say because obviously you're a student of history, but you've
also lived it in a very meaningful way, so you
(02:06):
always just provide such great wisdom.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
So I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Well that's so I'm delighted to be with you and
to be with your podcast. I think you do a
great job and this is a terrific chance to have
a good conversation.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Thank you, sir. I really appreciate that, so I wanted
to ask you.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Obviously we'll get into your book later, but I also
wanted to start off with you know, after writing your
latest book, Trump's Triumph America's Greatest Comeback, why do you
think President Trump is still so misunderstood by so many?
Speaker 4 (02:38):
I think for two reasons.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
One, they get overwhelmed by the daily noise, including his noise,
and so it's very hard for normal for people to
put it all together, so they Part of the reason
I wrote Trump's Triumph was to give a historic framework
and wish to think about him.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
And then two, for the people who.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Don't like him, is so great, they can't think and
they can't back off and in an objective way try
to understand why he's so effective despite how much they
dislike him. And I think that's a very big part
of what's going on here, that you just don't have
people who are willing to think beyond the immediate and
(03:22):
have some sense of what could be done and how
it could be done. And I find that that Trump.
If you view Trump strategically, he's pretty understandable. But if
you just try to follow the day after day tactical
maneuvering and the sheer noise. It's very hard to sort
(03:42):
it out. I spend probably three to five hours a
day trying to understand Trump and trying to understand what's
going on, not just Trump, but things like the Ukrainian
extraordinary achievement and taking out the Russian aircraft, or what's
happening in the markets, or what's happening with new breakthroughs
in robotics and what have you.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I mean, all that stuff is just amazing.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I wonder how much of it do you think is
because he just doesn't fit any mold, right, Like he
just creates his whole new paradigm.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
So it's you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah, I think that's a very big part of it.
And I find in my own case, because I've been
around long enough that I have a lot of legacy
thinking still in my head and I have to sometimes
back out and reassess things. And frankly, the reporting on
him is so biased, uh, and the people in the
(04:36):
print of the propaganda media are so hostile. I mean,
we went through this this the Taco attack on him
and the truth. I thought it was amazing because it
was implying that Trump always caves, but the fact is
this is a guy who you know, was lied up
(05:00):
out by the CIA and the FBI, had a serious
two year investigation by Mulla that proved nothing, was impeached
twice by the House, with the Senate refusing to take
it up, had four efforts to put him in jail,
two assassination attempts, And these guys write about him as
though he's shallow and soft and confused, when in fact,
(05:22):
everything we know about him in terms of his historic
record is that he's very determined, very courageous, has enormous
levels of energy, and is driving towards change on a
scale that no president since Franklin Roosevelt comes anywhere close
to the level of change that Trump is engaged in.
And if Trump can succeed in the twenty sixth election,
(05:43):
in the twenty eight election, he will be I think
the most consequential president since Washington and Lincoln. So he's
changing the culture, he's changing the government, he's changing the
politics and creating an entirely new coalition, and people who
on the left and old time Republicans both find it
impossible to think about him in a rational, reasonable way.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
What is interesting is, as you're laying out everything that
he has survived and been able to triumph over per
your book, it is remark. I mean, is there anyone
else that could handle all that? I mean I would
be curled up in the corner crying, like even one
of those things would probably break me as a human.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
Well, look, I.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Worked very closely with Reagan, and Reagan was an extraordinary
leader who ultimately defeated the Soviet Empire and relaunched our
economy with his three year tax cuts and rebuilt American
civic morale. But Reagan never had this kind of assault.
Nixon maybe the closest. And of course, in Nixon's case,
(06:50):
he tried to operate within the system as opposed to
fighting back. I mean, he had enough information that he
could have survived if he was willing to take on
and fight the entire establishment, but he wasn't because it
was inconceivable in his generation. So Trump's had a unique
moment in American history where a movement that began with
Goldwater and sixty four. And I always tell people you
(07:12):
can go on YouTube and you can find Ronald Reagan's
a time for choosing a speech he made on behalf
of Goldwater in October of sixty four. It's called a
time for choosing. It is still totally relevant today. And
this movement began growing and growing and growing. It was
the key reason we were able to succeed with the
Contract of America, which was pure Reaganism, in winning the
(07:35):
first majority for the House Republicans in forty years and
the first re elected majority since nineteen twenty eight, and
changed the whole balance of power in Washington. Before we
took over, there had been sixty years of Democrats and
four years of Republicans in charge of the House. After
we won, it's been twenty two years of Republicans in
eight years of Democrats, a huge decisive change that was
(07:58):
coming from the grassroots, and the grassroots came back with
the Tea Party movement, and then Trump really is And
this is why the title of my book is Trump's
Triumph and America's Greatest Comeback, because it's the combination of
the movement and the man that made this this experience possible.
And it's the combination of the energy of the movement
and the man. And I know of no political leader
(08:21):
who has the sheer energy that Donald Trump has and
the willingness to get up every day works seven days
a week and consistently move both the United States and
the world in a direction very different from where it
was going under the Obama Biden system.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
What do you think makes him so tough?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
You know, the man you've also you know, lived through
just you know, monumental and key moments in history.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
What makes him so tough.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Moving moving from Queens to Manhattan.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Yeah, because when he got to Manhattan, he was never
accepted because he was clearly a Queen's kind of middle class,
you know, wealthy but not us, and the elites never
let him in. And I think he decided at some point.
I mean I've never actually talked about it in fascinating conversation,
(09:14):
but there was some point I think in his twenties
when he decided, look, you know, if you guys aren't
going to let me in your club, I'm just going
to build my own club. And he just took him along.
He took him on when one of the reasons he
counterpunches so aggressively is he learned from page six that
when they attacked him, he had to attack back within
(09:35):
twelve hours. And so all of a sudden, here you
have this guy who is totally outside the cultural elite system, growing,
getting wealthy, becoming famous, and in a sense, creating his
own support system. And you know, I mean people tend
(09:56):
to forget. He did thirteen years of The Apprentice, so
here he is on on national television for thirteenth straight years.
He ran the Miss Universe contest, and he did things
like one of the great events, which was saving the
woman's skating rink. The New York City had spent six
years and thirteen million dollars and could not get the
(10:20):
rink to make ice. And Trump's apartment looked out over
the rink, and he finally got so terrible watching them
fail that he publicly said, you give me the project,
give me three million dollars, and in six months, I'll
fix it. Well, when the politicians did not want him
to prove how incompetent the bureaucracy was, but public pressure
(10:40):
forced them to turn.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
It over to him.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
He solved it in four months, came in twenty five
percent under budget. So he's spending, you know, about two
and a half million on a project that for six
million the city couldn't solve.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
And his book, The.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Art of the Deal, he has this great line where
he says, you know, I looked at making ice. They'd
hired a firm from Florida to try to make ice,
and I thought, and they said. I thought to myself,
who's really good at making ice? And I thought hockey.
And he went to the National Hockey League and he said,
who's the best ice making company? And they said, this
(11:19):
is firm in Montreal. So he calls them and they
come down and they look at the project and they say,
this is really embarrassing.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
This is so easy to solve.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
And so he said later on, he said it was
just common sense and good management. He said, it wasn't
a miracle. But he's doing all this as an outsider.
So if you're you know, if you're part of the
investment class and City Bank, and you know the Metropolitan
Museum and the the the Opera, you know, and you're
(11:50):
you're in the elites, who is this outsider doing all
this stuff? And The New York Times consistently disliked him
when he readid Trump Tower. He originally wanted to keep
the art deco front, and then the Times loved it
and praised him. And then his engineer said it's going
(12:10):
to cost three million dollars, and he said he didn't
want to keep it that butt, so they decided they
weren't going to keep the Art deco front. And for
three days, the New York Times attacked him. And what
he said he learned from that was that being attacked
actually sent a signal that he was building condos, and
he had dozens and dozens of people calling to say
(12:32):
if they could buy a condo, and he decided, you know,
any news helps, just doesn't matter, good or bad. Any
news helps, And that's the base of the rise of
Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
You know, it's interesting because especially the ice skating, how
you laid the rank, how you lay that out, because
he is so different, right, Like, he just comes up
with these ideas and then oftentimes they're criticized, but then
when you really think about it, you're like, actually, it's
really smart.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Right, He's a problem solver.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
He's taking a totally different lens to government, which is
healthy because clearly things aren't working out so great, and
even on tariffs. Right, it's something that we haven't done
in modern history as much, and it is sort of
an outside the box idea. Do you think are these
turffs a good idea or are we just kind of
(13:18):
like not catching up with where he is on it,
and the media is just not understanding or I guess,
how do you assess all of that well?
Speaker 3 (13:25):
And to take the example of tariffs, he talked about
tariffs in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
He said America is.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Getting ripped off the way of these really bad deals
and that other countries were exploiting us and taking advantage
of us.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
So it's not like it's new.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
And I think he began to look at the work
of William McKinley, who had passed the Great terr Effact
and who ran for President I and McKinley's approach.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
Was to have high barriers.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
To importing, create the biggest possible American manufacturing base, have
very high labor payments. We had the best paid workers
in the world. And that was a mind It was
a clear model of how to do things. And so
Trump has been enamored. I think of two things. One
is that he can get foreigners to pay for the
right to come and sell in America, and the other
(14:18):
is that is the largest market in the world. He
has enormous leverage in negotiating, and he likes making deals,
and the terrified allows him to go country by country,
making deals that at the margin improve the American economy.
And I think you're going to see that by the
time he's done, he will have had a very substantial
increase in revenue paid for by foreigners, and he will
(14:42):
have rebuilt an American industrial base on a scale that
people would have thought was impossible. And you saw some
of this when he went to Saudi Arabia and gut
her in the Loe and four days he comes back
with literally a trillion dollars, not a billion, a trillion
dollars sales and a trillion dollars in investment commitments. While
(15:04):
you do that, and you're going to really have I
think by next summer you're going to have a Trump
economic boom that people will be amazed by.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
And I liked the line in his speech in Saudi
Arabia about how the future of the region was commerce,
not chaos.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Well exactly, I mean, and he has a vision.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
And it occurred to me, actually, and I have not
ever talked him about it, but instead of talking about
turning Gaza into a riviera, he should have talked about
turning Gaza into Dubai. I mean, here's this extraordinary city
in the middle of the of the Persian Gulf with
the highest hotel willing in the world and proof that
(15:43):
you can be an Arab and have a very modern,
very commercial society. Killis and I were there a few
years ago. We went to mass with about eight hundred people,
most of them from India and from the Philippines, and
they were practicing Catholicism right in the middle of a
Muslim country. Because it's a it's a very modern, very open,
very commercially oriented country.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
We've got to take a quick commercial break more with
speaker new Gingrich. On the other side, you know, the
Democrat Party has been struggling.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
You know, they've experienced low approval ratings.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
They're spending all this money trying to figure out men,
which is like, if you're working that hard, then clearly
you don't get you know, they try to figure out
a group of voters.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Do you think the reason they're struggling so.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Much is the basis of the conversation we're having so
much or we've had so far that he's just so different,
you know, and so they don't know how to respond
to that.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Why do you think they're struggling?
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Look, I think the core problem of the Democratic party
is that they have been taken over by a left wing,
anti American, anti male, anti white, anti business ideology captured
by somebody like AOC. And if you look at their
(17:00):
more radical members, their views are frankly nuts and they
believe them. I mean they get in rooms and talk
to each other and they believe all this stuff. So
it's not actually Trump. The rise of Trump is in
part being fueled by people who are so turned off. Mean,
Trump had the highest vote among Hispanics of any Republican
(17:22):
in history. He had the highest vote among African American
males of any Republican since Dwight Eisenhower in the nineteen fifties.
And it's partly because they're being driven away by a
Democratic party which is dedicated to crazy values. I mean,
if you look around the country, for example, the number
of Democratic cities and state governments that are sanctuary cities
(17:44):
for illegal criminals. I mean, it's one thing to say
they want to be sanctuaries for people who are here
illegally but have not committed crimes, but they're sanctuary cities
for murderers and rapists and armed robbers. That's a pretty
crazy value system.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
So looking at the midterms.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
I guess one thing I am a little bit concerned
about is, you know, President Trump's so unique and he's
been able to build this coalition that's so different transform
the Republican Party. But I wonder if Republicans can carry
it on. And I just I wonder how they'll do
in the midterms without I mean, even though President Trump's
in office, he's not on the ballot.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
He had look, the.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Only person who can maximize the Republican chance of winning
the midterms is Donald J.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Trump.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
He has to make the midterms a vote in favor
of trump Ism and a vote for President Trump. And
the marginal House members are going to be re elected
if President.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
Trump can turn out the vote.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
But we've got I think thirteen Democrat Democrats in the
seats that Trump carried and another twenty one Democrats and
seats that Trump got within twenty within five percent, And
if he can turn out the vote, We've had this unique,
extraordinary transition. Where in the old days, it was the
Democrats who had trouble in off years because their voter
(19:08):
base included a lot of people who would only vote
for president.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Now we've switched.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
We're the Party of working Americans, and we're the party
of young people in a way that was unthinkable ten
years ago, and so we now have to worry about
turning out the vote among people who aren't in the
habit of voting in off yr elections. And I think
the only way to do that is to an affect psychologically.
Put Trump on the ballot in every single campaign and
(19:34):
have the Trump voters decide that they have to vote
because it's about whether or not the Trump mega revolution
continues or whether the Democrats take control and do everything
they can to block it for two years. If that
gets driven through and that's the choice in election day,
then I think, in fact, we'll have a big enough
turnout to win the election.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
What it's sort of ironic, because the media and the
Democrats have tried to lead throughout the year, is that
Trump's talk, but in fact, like he's the reason people
are turning out in support of the Republican Party, Like
he's the reason why we have the House, He's the
reason we have the Senate. You know, no one else
would have been able to win the popular vote, but
President Trump heading into twenty twenty eight, do you see
(20:16):
anyone who is able to keep that America first coalition
together and to carry on the mantle or I guess
what happens to the Republican Party beyond this term and
beyond President Trump.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Well, I think President Trump picked JD. Fans, who was
actually a year younger than Richard Nixon when Dwight Eisenewer
picked him in nineteen fifty two. So Vance is now
the youngest vice president of American history. And I think
Trump picked him because he thought he was the most
likely person to carry on the Maga tradition. And I think, frankly,
(20:50):
if Trump is successful, it will be almost inevitable that
JD will become the nominee because he will have stood
next to Trump for four years. I watched them one
Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery as a team, and
you could just sense that the JD was the logical, younger,
next generation version of Trump, and that he and his
(21:13):
wife are going to be very attractive people who I
think will have probably a ninety percent likelihood of being
the Republican nominee and probably a much better than even
chance of being the president.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
He does seem to really respect him, even just you
know the way in which he talks about him. He
does seem to have President Trump does seem to have
a lot of respect for.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
The vice president.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Obviously, there's a lot of conversation right now about the big,
beautiful bill. Obviously everyone's in agreement that it's big, but
is it beautiful?
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Well, given the nature of the American Constitution and the
legislative process, it's very hard to be beautiful while they're
going through the process. Somebody once said that you don't
want to watch making either sausage or laws, because both
of them are pretty hard difficult. I think in the
end we will get a bill because the President will
(22:10):
intervene and listen to people and find a way to
bring people together. We will only get the bill because
of Trump. And it's tricky because there are things the
Senators want that can will not pass the House, and
there are things that House members want that will not
pass the Senate. And getting everybody in the same room
to understand this is the most you can get, but
(22:30):
it beats not getting anything is going to take time,
and people have to frankly get worn down by the
process and finally come to a decision. Yeah, I've gotten
all I can get, and I'm gonna vote yes. Because
for this bill to fail would be unthinkable, and therefore
they've got to find you know, it's not there yet,
but they've got to find a way to get to
a yes that will pass both the House and the Senate.
(22:53):
I think Senator Thune is doing a very good job
as the majority leader in the Senate, and I think
that Mike Johnson's doing an astonishing job as the Speaker
of the House. And with Trump's leadership, the three of them,
I think will eventually get to a bill that will pass.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
You know, any spearhead of this process before, when you
were speaker. Why is it so hard for Congress to
cut spending?
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Well, because everybody who wants the money is excited and
aroused and angry, and everybody who would like to balance
the budget is soft and passive and not going to
get in a fight. And I found that this is
part of my advice to fiscal conservatives. There are two
big things I would advise them to do. First, resurrect
the balance budget as the goal, because if the goal
(23:41):
is balancing the budget, people will tolerate spending cuts dramatically better.
After if you're just running a smaller deficit, Why can't
I have mine because it's going to be a deficit anyway.
But if the goal is a balance budget, then people
will tolerate cuts that they will not tolerate in a
period of deficits. Second, I think you have to make
(24:04):
America healthy again as a core goal, because if people
are healthy and don't need health care, then the cost
of health care will drop dramatically, not because you're cutting it,
but because people are healthier. And I think you can
get probably four percent of the gross domestic product just
by implementing making Americans healthy again, and that four percent
(24:26):
is enough basically to get you to a balanced budget.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
How would you assess President Trump's job so far? How
do you think he's doing in this term and how
would you sort of compare that to his first term.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Well, I think in scale of achievement, it's an a plus.
As I've said earlier, he currently is on a path
to be far and away the biggest change agent since FDR,
and if he can win in twenty six and twenty eight,
he will have been an even bigger change agent I
think than FDR. But I would also say that i'd
(25:01):
probably give him an a minus for style. I mean,
he gets involved in fights, he doesn't need, and he
gets involved.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
In it is entertaining, though, I mean, I.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
Mean it's entertaining, but it's not necessarily helpful. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
So, but he's still you know, he's he's simply an
extraordinary person. And that's why when I wrote Trump's Tiumph
and we began in October because I was sure.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
He was going to win.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
It's it's hard to imagine anybody else having the endurance
and the courage and the energy and frankly the intelligence.
I mean, this is a very very smart guy. And
Left made a huge mistake by rigging the election in
twenty and giving him four years in the wilderness to
think about things and to put together what he really
wants to accomplish. And I think he's going to be
(25:48):
extraordinarily effective.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
What's the thing?
Speaker 2 (25:50):
People never give him credit for how smart he is.
And I think one thing that really stood out to
me this in the past election cycle, particularly and particularly
in these line, longer form interviews that he did with
you know, his sit down interview with Joe Rogan or
the interview he did with Elon on X.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
I mean, the guy is brilliant.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Like name one Democrat who could sit down with anyone
and have a two to three hour conversation in depth
and be able to really understand the issues, dive into
the issues, and then also present ways to solve them.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, Bill Clinton, Yeah, well, yeah, actually that's a good point.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
Well, Bill Clinton.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Bill Clinton is the one modern Democrat who could who
could do Joe Rogan and be fine. Nobody else could.
Obama couldn't. Obviously, Biden would be silly. And and I
don't know of any Democratic governor or senator who could
go through three or four hours like that and have
the range of knowledge and the range of common sense.
(26:45):
And they're they're prohibited by their ideology from having solutions.
They can't take on the teachers' union, they can't take
on the government bureaucracy, they can't take on their left
wing allies, so they can't solve things. I mean, it's
a huge problem for the Democrat Party right now. It's
become the party of.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
No well and yeah, the party of twenty percent issues.
You know, it's like it's sort of baffling, Like even
on the men and women's sports, it's like, you know,
eighty percent of the country disagrees with you, yet they're
digging in in states like California or Maine.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
You know, or favoring the return of people who are
deported for being criminals, or being offended that we're locking
up people who are criminals, you know. I mean, you
go through item after item. We do a project. We
run a project called the America's New Majority Project, which
people can see if they go to America's New Majority
Project dot com. And it is astonishing to me that
(27:40):
the Democrats are consistently on the fifteen to twenty percent
range and it's gradually wearing their party down.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
We've got to take a quick commercial break, but if
you're enjoying this episode so far, please post on social
media or share with your friends. What's interesting is I mean,
if you think about at least the immigration issue, like
I wonder if this was thought out or because if
you think about it's kind of genius. Because Joe Biden
(28:08):
earned the Democrat party they led in like millions of
illegal aliens to the country. Obviously they want some sort
of pathway to citizenship and pathway to vote for them,
so import like this new voter base, and then it's
virtually impossible to deport all of them because judges keep
trying to block President Trump's attempts, and he's trying to
be creative and finding ways to deport them so they
(28:29):
might be stuck here, and so like, that's kind of brilliant.
And what's the long term impact of that on the country?
And do you think that that was some thought out
master plan of theirs or it just sort of happened.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
No. I think what's happened is that the district level judges,
the left wing, once appointed by Obama and by Biden,
have become the last stand trying to stop trump Ism,
and so they made decisions which are clearly unconstitutional. I
do not believe the dish judges have the ability to
(29:02):
issue a nationwide injunction usurping the President United States. I mean,
the idea that some local district judge who's never been
elected and is not particularly an expert on the subject
matter can overrule the incumbent chief of staff, a chief
executive in president United States is crazy. And Jefferson said
rule by judges would be an oligarchy. Lincoln made the
(29:25):
eighteen fifty eight Senate race around the Supreme Court being
wrong on the dred Scott decision that extended slavery to
the whole country. In fact, Lincoln lectured the Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court who was sitting in front of
him when he gave his inaugural address in eighteen sixty one.
And I'm convinced that Lincoln in part said government of
(29:45):
the people, by the people, and for the people as
a rebuke to the judges. And so I think that
we are right at the edge of a genuine constitutional
crisis in which judges are grotesque overreaching and doing things
that they don't have the power to do in areas
that they don't have the knowledge of, and they are
(30:06):
trying to usurp somebody who got seventy seven million votes,
Well they got zero.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Well what's the path forward on that? Like, what do
we do about it?
Speaker 4 (30:15):
Well?
Speaker 3 (30:16):
I testified in the House Judiciary Committee a couple of
months ago, and I started my testimony by reading the
names of fourteen people who turned out to be the
fourteen judges who were abolished by Jefferson in the Judicial
Act of eighteen o two. He didn't impeach him, he
just eliminated the courts. So one step would be for
(30:37):
the appropriations committees to simply abolish the payment for the
judges who are nuts. Another step would be to pass
finish passing the bill which Daryl Aia passed in the
House which blocks district judges from issuing nationwide injunctions. There's
a parallel bill by Senator Grassley and the Senate. If that,
(30:59):
if those two bills could be passed, then that would
frankly eliminate the district judge level problem. But there are
steps that can be taken and should be taken. The
founding fathers were very clear if you read the Federalist papers,
that the Court was to be the weakest of the three,
not the strongest, and that the Supreme Court was supreme
(31:21):
only among courts. It's not supreme over the House and Senate.
And the founding fathers would have thought it was absurd
to have some of the kind of power invested in
the judiciary that has currently invested in them.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
And they would have said that it's.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
An infringement on the right of a people to govern
themselves to have a small bunch of judges who think that,
you know, they can be a floating constitutional convention by
four to three or five to four majorities in which
on one swing judge suddenly becomes the equivalent of an
entire constitutional convention.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
In the past few weeks, we have seen someone torch
the Pennsylvania Governor's mansion Josh Shapiro because he's Jewish, two
Jews executed at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, and
then over last weekend we saw utterly Jewish people set
on fire and boulder at Colorado. How dangerous is the
(32:20):
political left And have they gotten more dangerous since your
time in office.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Well, they've become much more extreme and much more violent,
much more self righteous, convinced that their moral purity allows
them to do whatever they want to, and I think
more desperate. I think we have to clamp down on
anti Semitism. Anti Semitism should be the equivalent of the
ku Klux Klan. I mean, people would not tolerate the
(32:46):
ku Klux Klan demonstrating at Columbia University or Harvard. They
wouldn't tolerate the ku Klux Klan trying to kill people
to a Black church. And I think that we have
to have the same decision that being anti Submitica simply
unacceptable in American society, that if you are here on
a visa, we should expel you. If you're here as
(33:08):
an American. We should have very strict penalties and we
should make it very very expensive to be openly anti submitted.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
You know, we saw with a suspect in Boulder, Colorado.
He was denied a visa in two thousand and five,
granted one under the Biden administration, and then he overstayed,
and that was also granted a work permit after overstaying.
And then yet the Trump administration has been condemned for
trying to revoke visas. Do we I mean, I feel
(33:38):
like we should just do a complete overhaul in the
visa process, Like why are we letting these people in
the United States? Like what does that vetting look like?
Who are we letting into the United States? You know,
what are your thoughts on that and which I've done
about it?
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Look, I think that's why they've for example, suspended student visas,
because we we have to build a very different system.
I would say that unless you are prepared to accept
that the US Constitution is the law of the land,
and that, for example, you couldn't have sharia in the
context of the US Constitution.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
I think anybody who is.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Either a member of the Chinese Communist Party or whose
family can be blackmailed by the Chinese Communist Party. It's
very dubious to me why you would give them the
student visa, because you know that they're going to become
they have a very high possibility becoming spies. And we
now know that that's a real problem or and a
real challenge. And we've we've had some very sobering reports
(34:40):
such as the couple, for example, who had brought in
a fungus which could have been devastating as an epidemic,
and there's no good reason for them to have brought
it in, and they brought it in secretly and in
violation of our national security laws. And so I think
we've got to become much tougher and much clearer our
(35:00):
unwillingness to accept foreign threats being injected into our society.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Yeah, one thing, you know, I'd love your perspective on
this historically.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
But what's interesting to.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Me is we are in a time right now where
you know, fifty percent of the country like they believe,
or probably less than that, but they believe President Trump
is a threat to democracy, like they basically view him
as Hitler, as they have pointed out previously and then
on the right over the past four years in the
Bio administration, We're like, this guy is a threat to democracy.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
So you have half of.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
The country believing the other part. You know that there
were threat to democracy and vice versa, So how do
we navigate that moving forward? Have you have you ever
seen the country this divided from a historical perspective, and like,
what do we do about it moving forward?
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Well, when it was this divided in the eighteen fifties, right, yeah,
you know, I mean, but we.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
Shouldn't kill ourselves. I had a very famous Lincoln scholar.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
I guess more in modern history it probably should have.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Asked, there have been periods when we've had some limited threats,
but nothing on this scale. And I had a Lincoln
scholar tell me in October that the hostility to Trump
very much represented the hostility of the slave states to Lincoln.
And it was for the same reason because Trump represented
(36:18):
the end of the left wing elites worldview, just as
Lincoln had ultimately meant the end of slaveholding in the
Southern culture. And I think that we have to understand
this is a real cultural civil war. This is the
people sincerely, deeply believe things on the left which you
and I would think are crazy, but they believe them,
(36:41):
and they operate on those beliefs, and they're not going
to give them up easily. And they feel extraordinarily threatened
by the MAGA movement and by Trump, and by the
whole notion that we are not going to tolerate you with,
for example, that we're going to insist that boys should
not be competing in girls' sports. Well, if you are
(37:01):
truly on the left, that that's a horrifying idea, and
there's a sign that we're totally insensitive.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
Or if we insist.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
That, uh, you know, the only flag you should fly
in front of a US embassy is the American flag, well,
from the standpoint of the gay pride movement, that's that's
a horrifying idea. Or if we insist that parents have
a right to know what's being told there are children
in class, then you have a large part of the
teachers union that feels that we have now usurped their
(37:30):
role as the ultimate controller of children. Uh And and
many elements the teachers union are anti parent and don't
want parents in the classroom, don't want parents involved. So
I mean, I think these are these are real, fundamental,
profound differences and they're not going to go away easily.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
We're finding out a lot about Joe Biden's mental a
client well and office. Obviously we all knew it at
the time, but we're finding out just you know, how
deep it went and how.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Bad it was.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
How much should Republicans focus on it? Should Republicans have hearings?
You know, what do you like? Is that looking back?
Should we be looking forward? Or you know, if you
were Speaker Johnson or Majority Leader Thoon, how.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Would you handle this issue in Congress?
Speaker 3 (38:17):
Well, look, I think it's probably going to turn out
to be the biggest scandal in American history. You had
you clearly sometime I think in twenty twenty three Biden
lost the ability to be president. And for example, after
the election, on one day, they commuted twenty four hundred sentences.
(38:43):
Now it was then with an auto pen Who picked
the twenty four hundred? Why were they included? Why was
that particular action undertaken? Who decided it? Because clearly Biden didn't,
So there was somebody basically playing the role of president.
Because it's clearly a presidential prerogative in the Constitution, and
(39:04):
you can just go through item after item like that
I mean Secretary of Energy right coming to the other
day that they had shoveled his award, was shoveled seventy
three billion dollars in grants out of the Energy Department
in a very short period of time, trying to get
the money out before Trump could come in and block it. Well, again,
(39:24):
who's making those kind of decisions? Because I think you're
going to find that there's almost no presidential control and
no presidential influence except in the very broadest sense of things,
but that overall, at some point, as I said, I
think it's in twenty three, Biden simply ceased to be
(39:45):
capable of following the information and following the ideas and
making big decisions.
Speaker 4 (39:51):
So somebody was, and if not him, who.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
I also find it interesting because even going back to
twenty nineteen, you know, we had that basement campaign during
the twenty twenty presidential election, and they blamed COVID, But
now increasingly it's looking like no, he was just already
experiencing mental decline and that was an excuse to hide
him in the basement. And even they were saying in
twenty nineteen in this book that he forgot the name
(40:17):
of an AID who had been with him since I
think nineteen eighty one, so it's basically a family member
at this point. You know, So this wasn't even just
a you know, a twenty twenty four issue. It seems
like this was a twenty twenty issue.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
I think it could have been, except that you had
the propaganda media so deeply committed to propping him up.
Which is why I think having somebody like Jake Tapper
write a book is hysterical, because so Taper was one
of the chief defenders of Biden, and now he's writing
a book saying that the media failed to cover this
when he was part of the people who failed to
cover it.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Well, speaker, I'm sure you saw did he just did it?
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Creane gene Pierre, of all people, I mean, that's like
you were the mouthpiece, yes for all questions.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
I think she's setting up to sell books.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
So she's now left the Democratic Party, creating news by
becoming an independent. Frankly, I suspect a number of Democrats
are glad she's left. I always thought that she was
a peculiarly bad press person for the president, and she
didn't help him at all. I didn't think and that's
a very hard job anyway, But if you look at
(41:26):
the contrast with how Caroline Lovet's doing it, it's astonishingly
how difference the impact is.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
One thing I think we found.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
You know, it's been interesting with all the DOGE information
that has surfaced, is you look, I mean you look
at all this money, like even the Stacy Abrams. I
think it was like two billion dollar grant that she received,
if memory serves me correct. I mean, how much of
government spending is just like a money laundering scheme for politicians.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Well, I mean, I think that's a good example where
we have to get to the bottom of it. I mean,
what was she doing for the money? Did she actually
do it? The amount was astonishing. But look, one of
the key parts of the Democratic Party is that it's
a machine that's held together by money. And this is
why they're they're in for a very difficult challenge because
(42:18):
if the Republicans and Trump can cut off the flow
of government money and taxpayer money to these machines, they're
going to start collapsing because they're not held together by affection.
They're held together by cash. And that's why if you
watch both Obama and Biden, they were very very big
on giving out money. The various green issues was probably
(42:42):
their best cover for doing it. But they were paying
off a lot of people with a lot of money.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
And the number of corporations that failed.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Once they could no longer access you know that kind
of money is just astonishing me. You go back to
go look at the various green firms that would get two, three,
four hundred million dollars and then fail deliver nothing. And
it was all basically a way.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Of paying people off, like Clendra.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
That's the classic example. And it came under Obama, which
is a key part of this. And I keep talking
about the Obama Biden connection because I think we're I
think we're missing it if we if we just focus
on Biden. Was this was a twelve year I think
of Biden as the Obama's third term. This was a
twelve year project of trying to move America to the
(43:33):
left and trying to build a machine with taxpayer money.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Quick break stay with Us.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Has any other Democrat president done as much harm to
the country than Obama?
Speaker 4 (43:45):
Well, I mean, you can.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
Make an argument for a Buchanan and just before the
Civil War, but if you look at the last century,
I would say no that. But again, I think what
you had was the Obama team came back in the
White House with Biden, and everything which Obama had started
just got a lot sicker and a lot worse over
the overtime. And in a sense, if Trump had had
(44:11):
accepted defeat and gone away, he would have been sort
of a brief interruption in the gradual decay of America.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
And it was. It was part of the reason I
wrote Trump's Triumph. It is just the sheer courage of saying.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
No, I'm not leaving, I'm going to stay here, I'm
going to fight it out, and I'm going to get
this country back on track. And then I think he
interpreted the providential moment of turning his head at the
exact second necessary.
Speaker 4 (44:38):
To avoid getting killed at Butler.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
I think that gave him a real sense that God
had saved his life for the purpose of making America
great again. And it's made him a much more i think,
focused and a much more reverential person than he was
in the first term.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
Probably the moment that won him the election, because you know,
America is really in need of a fighter, and we
had an incredibly weak president and here's this guy that like,
survives a bullet and his immediate instinct is to stand
up and say a fight, fight, fight, Like who is.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Made of that? You know? It's like, yeah, it was remarkable.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
It was really one of the iconic moments in defining him,
as was I think the picture they took in the
Fulton County Sheriff's office, the mugshot where Trump looks very angry,
And I think I was told that in a number
of black barbershops they were putting that picture up because
it showed that the man was after him, just like
they were after in their mind, their community.
Speaker 4 (45:35):
So it actually created a common identity.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
As somebody who's written multiple books about Trump, what new
insights or perspectives did you cover in writing this book,
Trump's Triumph.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
Well, I think that there's a continuity to Trump, So
in that sense, I don't think there's a giant changes,
but I think his ability as a communicator. I mean,
you can't imagine anybody else passing out French fries at
McDonald's and then riding in a garbage truck and going
(46:09):
into a fifty thousand person rally wearing a garbage collector's
vest and saying they say this makes me look thinner.
Maybe I should wear it for the rest of the campaign.
Speaker 4 (46:17):
I mean that.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
Ability to connect with Americans, remembering that eighty seven percent
of the country goes to McDonald's at least once a year,
and forty million Americans, including Jeff Beza's work at McDonald's.
He has a sense of where the average American is
better than any politician I've ever seen. And at the
same time, I think you see this growth in my
(46:41):
book on Trump's triumph. He really did become a more
serious person and a more reverential person, particularly after the
second assassination attempt. I was talking with speaker Mike Johnson
at one point and he said he happened to be
at more on logo when the FBI or when the
Secret Service came in to brief Trump on this second
(47:02):
effort to kill him, which was the guy that they
caught in the golf course. And he said that really
shook Trump and made it different from there was this
nut in Butler too, there really is a serious desire
to kill me. And Johnson went off with Trump to
a private room and they prayed for two hours, and
(47:22):
I think that that was the moment where Trump really
believed that he had a moral duty to implement what
he saw is God's desire to make America great again.
And it reminded me Callissa and I had done two movies,
Nine Days to Change the World about John Paul the
second and then Run The Destiny about Reagan, And when
(47:45):
the two of them got together for the very first time,
they were comparing notes.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
They'd both been actors.
Speaker 3 (47:51):
John Paul was an actor before he became a priest,
and of course Reagan had been very successful as an actor,
and they'd.
Speaker 4 (47:57):
Both been shot and survived, and they talked about but
what does.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
It mean that God has spared us? And their mutual
conclusion was that they'd been spared in order to defeat
the Soviet Empire, and so they agreed that they'd have
an alliance to do just that, and of course, a
few years later, the Soviet Empire disappeared. I think in
Trump's case was a similar moment where it hits him
that if God had not intervened, he would be dead,
(48:24):
and so he actually owed the rest of his life
to try to implement what God's will was. And I
think that that made him a significantly different, more mature
person from the guy who ran in twenty sixty.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
You know, your wife was the previously served as the
ambassador to the Holy See. We have an American pope.
What are your thoughts on him and what does that
mean for our country?
Speaker 3 (48:50):
Well, Calicia, who knew Pope Francis pretty well and liked him.
They were actually friends. She went to the funeral. We
were surprised when the white smoke went up and out
came an American. I don't think any of us expected that.
Her line was that he's good for the church and
(49:12):
he's good for America, and I think that's probably right.
I mean, he's a genuine American, but he also served
in Peru for a very long time, so he has
a real feel for third world countries and for the
nature of poverty in these rural communities. And I think
he's going to be a very successful pope at a
(49:35):
sort of stabilizing and growing the church. I think you'll
have a real effect on young people and a real
focus on bringing the new generation into the church, on
values and on attitudes that are very very central to
being a Catholic and being a Christian. And in that sense,
I think he's going to be a very significant force
(49:57):
moving in the right direction. He's very committed to trying
to help mediate things. I think I noticed that he
was calling Putin, tried to to talk some things, and
he President Trump has already invited him to come to
the US, and I think that there's a real possibility
that will happen. Apparently JD Vance met with him. Jadevance
(50:21):
was the last major figure to meet with Pope Francis
before almost literally as soon as he was inaugurated, and
I think they had a sense that this is somebody
that can really work with and I think that will
be You know, there are a billions, three hundred many
Catholics around the world, and working together you can accomplish
(50:42):
big things. Cloister had done that with working on everything
from immigrants to humans who had been sold into slavery,
to problems of poverty, and so she had a real
sense of the complexity of the church. And I think
that the church can be an enormous force for good.
(51:04):
And I think that this Pope is going to be
very open to working with the American government.
Speaker 1 (51:10):
Before we go through what else about Trump's triumph?
Speaker 2 (51:13):
Would you like to convey to the audience that we
haven't addressed yet well.
Speaker 4 (51:17):
I think two things. One that it is.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
Truly a miraculous story of a comeback that probably no
one else could have pulled off. And the second is
that you have to think ahead. You have to look
at the future. When he talks about America entering a
golden age, he means it. And I think with the
two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of our founding next year,
if we spend half of our time looking back at
how we got here and half of our time looking
(51:42):
forward to the next two hundred and fifty years, we'll
have some sense of what an extraordinary thing it is
to be an American and what a remarkable opportunity we
have to create a better future, not just for ourselves,
but for the whole world.
Speaker 4 (51:54):
And I think we owe a great deal of that
to Donald J. Trump.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
Speaker New Gingridge, it's always such an honor to have
you on the show. You just have such a depth
of knowledge that no one else has. I could ask
you a billion questions because I feel like I learned
so much from you, and it's truly an honor.
Speaker 3 (52:09):
Lisa, Lisa, You're so flattering. I've always glad to come
back in the show because you make me feel.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
Good perfect, then I'll keep having you back.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
But I truly always learn so much from you, so
it really is an honest sir, And thank you for
being so being so generous with your time. We really
appreciate it. Glad to do it though a speaker New Gingrich.
We appreciate him for taking the time to come on
the show and being so generous with his time. Appreciate
you guys at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday,
but of course you can listen throughout the week until
next time.
Welcome to the Truth with Lisa Booth, where we cut.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Through the noise to get to the heart of what matters,
to get to the heart of what's shaping or nation today.
We have the great honor to have former Speaker new Gingridge,
a political titan and also the author of the new
book Trump's Triumph, America's Greatest Comeback, on the show. We're
going to get to a lot a lot to unpack
(00:23):
with Speaker new Gingridge, because basically he's brilliant well impact
why President Trump remains one of the most misunderstood figures
in modern politics. We'll also dive into the details of
the Big Beautiful Bill. We know it's big, but is
it beautiful?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Willso tackle some of.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
The pressing issues like the challenges of cutting government spending
and whether Speaker Johnson a majority leader thoon or moving
fast enough to deliver results for you, the American people.
We also talk about Joe Biden's mental decline, How much
to Congress focus on that, what should they do about it?
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Moving forward? We have hearings.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
We'll also get into the rising political violence on the left.
Has he seen the political left be so dangerous before?
Speaker 1 (01:11):
What's the impact of that? On the country.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
We'll also dig into the Democrats' struggles and the future
of the Republican Party and lastly, and maybe most importantly,
how will history remember President Trump?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
So stay tuned for.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
This very thoughtful conversation with Speaker new Gingrich, who's been
very generous with his time. It's an honor to have
him on, and trust me, you're going to love this interview.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
We'll speak her New Gingrich.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
It's always such an honor to have you on the show.
You know, I was telling you before we got started. Obviously,
there is an influx of information in today's world, and
most of it's not correct, and most people are letting
their hair on fire when they shouldn't be. So it's
always just great to to hear what you have to
say because obviously you're a student of history, but you've
also lived it in a very meaningful way, so you
(02:06):
always just provide such great wisdom.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
So I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Well that's so I'm delighted to be with you and
to be with your podcast. I think you do a
great job and this is a terrific chance to have
a good conversation.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Thank you, sir. I really appreciate that, so I wanted
to ask you.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Obviously we'll get into your book later, but I also
wanted to start off with you know, after writing your
latest book, Trump's Triumph America's Greatest Comeback, why do you
think President Trump is still so misunderstood by so many?
Speaker 4 (02:38):
I think for two reasons.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
One, they get overwhelmed by the daily noise, including his noise,
and so it's very hard for normal for people to
put it all together, so they Part of the reason
I wrote Trump's Triumph was to give a historic framework
and wish to think about him.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
And then two, for the people who.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Don't like him, is so great, they can't think and
they can't back off and in an objective way try
to understand why he's so effective despite how much they
dislike him. And I think that's a very big part
of what's going on here, that you just don't have
people who are willing to think beyond the immediate and
(03:22):
have some sense of what could be done and how
it could be done. And I find that that Trump.
If you view Trump strategically, he's pretty understandable. But if
you just try to follow the day after day tactical
maneuvering and the sheer noise. It's very hard to sort
(03:42):
it out. I spend probably three to five hours a
day trying to understand Trump and trying to understand what's
going on, not just Trump, but things like the Ukrainian
extraordinary achievement and taking out the Russian aircraft, or what's
happening in the markets, or what's happening with new breakthroughs
in robotics and what have you.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I mean, all that stuff is just amazing.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I wonder how much of it do you think is
because he just doesn't fit any mold, right, Like he
just creates his whole new paradigm.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
So it's you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah, I think that's a very big part of it.
And I find in my own case, because I've been
around long enough that I have a lot of legacy
thinking still in my head and I have to sometimes
back out and reassess things. And frankly, the reporting on
him is so biased, uh, and the people in the
(04:36):
print of the propaganda media are so hostile. I mean,
we went through this this the Taco attack on him
and the truth. I thought it was amazing because it
was implying that Trump always caves, but the fact is
this is a guy who you know, was lied up
(05:00):
out by the CIA and the FBI, had a serious
two year investigation by Mulla that proved nothing, was impeached
twice by the House, with the Senate refusing to take
it up, had four efforts to put him in jail,
two assassination attempts, And these guys write about him as
though he's shallow and soft and confused, when in fact,
(05:22):
everything we know about him in terms of his historic
record is that he's very determined, very courageous, has enormous
levels of energy, and is driving towards change on a
scale that no president since Franklin Roosevelt comes anywhere close
to the level of change that Trump is engaged in.
And if Trump can succeed in the twenty sixth election,
(05:43):
in the twenty eight election, he will be I think
the most consequential president since Washington and Lincoln. So he's
changing the culture, he's changing the government, he's changing the
politics and creating an entirely new coalition, and people who
on the left and old time Republicans both find it
impossible to think about him in a rational, reasonable way.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
What is interesting is, as you're laying out everything that
he has survived and been able to triumph over per
your book, it is remark. I mean, is there anyone
else that could handle all that? I mean I would
be curled up in the corner crying, like even one
of those things would probably break me as a human.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
Well, look, I.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Worked very closely with Reagan, and Reagan was an extraordinary
leader who ultimately defeated the Soviet Empire and relaunched our
economy with his three year tax cuts and rebuilt American
civic morale. But Reagan never had this kind of assault.
Nixon maybe the closest. And of course, in Nixon's case,
(06:50):
he tried to operate within the system as opposed to
fighting back. I mean, he had enough information that he
could have survived if he was willing to take on
and fight the entire establishment, but he wasn't because it
was inconceivable in his generation. So Trump's had a unique
moment in American history where a movement that began with
Goldwater and sixty four. And I always tell people you
(07:12):
can go on YouTube and you can find Ronald Reagan's
a time for choosing a speech he made on behalf
of Goldwater in October of sixty four. It's called a
time for choosing. It is still totally relevant today. And
this movement began growing and growing and growing. It was
the key reason we were able to succeed with the
Contract of America, which was pure Reaganism, in winning the
(07:35):
first majority for the House Republicans in forty years and
the first re elected majority since nineteen twenty eight, and
changed the whole balance of power in Washington. Before we
took over, there had been sixty years of Democrats and
four years of Republicans in charge of the House. After
we won, it's been twenty two years of Republicans in
eight years of Democrats, a huge decisive change that was
(07:58):
coming from the grassroots, and the grassroots came back with
the Tea Party movement, and then Trump really is And
this is why the title of my book is Trump's
Triumph and America's Greatest Comeback, because it's the combination of
the movement and the man that made this this experience possible.
And it's the combination of the energy of the movement
and the man. And I know of no political leader
(08:21):
who has the sheer energy that Donald Trump has and
the willingness to get up every day works seven days
a week and consistently move both the United States and
the world in a direction very different from where it
was going under the Obama Biden system.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
What do you think makes him so tough?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
You know, the man you've also you know, lived through
just you know, monumental and key moments in history.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
What makes him so tough.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Moving moving from Queens to Manhattan.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Yeah, because when he got to Manhattan, he was never
accepted because he was clearly a Queen's kind of middle class,
you know, wealthy but not us, and the elites never
let him in. And I think he decided at some point.
I mean I've never actually talked about it in fascinating conversation,
(09:14):
but there was some point I think in his twenties
when he decided, look, you know, if you guys aren't
going to let me in your club, I'm just going
to build my own club. And he just took him along.
He took him on when one of the reasons he
counterpunches so aggressively is he learned from page six that
when they attacked him, he had to attack back within
(09:35):
twelve hours. And so all of a sudden, here you
have this guy who is totally outside the cultural elite system, growing,
getting wealthy, becoming famous, and in a sense, creating his
own support system. And you know, I mean people tend
(09:56):
to forget. He did thirteen years of The Apprentice, so
here he is on on national television for thirteenth straight years.
He ran the Miss Universe contest, and he did things
like one of the great events, which was saving the
woman's skating rink. The New York City had spent six
years and thirteen million dollars and could not get the
(10:20):
rink to make ice. And Trump's apartment looked out over
the rink, and he finally got so terrible watching them
fail that he publicly said, you give me the project,
give me three million dollars, and in six months, I'll
fix it. Well, when the politicians did not want him
to prove how incompetent the bureaucracy was, but public pressure
(10:40):
forced them to turn.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
It over to him.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
He solved it in four months, came in twenty five
percent under budget. So he's spending, you know, about two
and a half million on a project that for six
million the city couldn't solve.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
And his book, The.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Art of the Deal, he has this great line where
he says, you know, I looked at making ice. They'd
hired a firm from Florida to try to make ice,
and I thought, and they said. I thought to myself,
who's really good at making ice? And I thought hockey.
And he went to the National Hockey League and he said,
who's the best ice making company? And they said, this
(11:19):
is firm in Montreal. So he calls them and they
come down and they look at the project and they say,
this is really embarrassing.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
This is so easy to solve.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
And so he said later on, he said it was
just common sense and good management. He said, it wasn't
a miracle. But he's doing all this as an outsider.
So if you're you know, if you're part of the
investment class and City Bank, and you know the Metropolitan
Museum and the the the Opera, you know, and you're
(11:50):
you're in the elites, who is this outsider doing all
this stuff? And The New York Times consistently disliked him
when he readid Trump Tower. He originally wanted to keep
the art deco front, and then the Times loved it
and praised him. And then his engineer said it's going
(12:10):
to cost three million dollars, and he said he didn't
want to keep it that butt, so they decided they
weren't going to keep the Art deco front. And for
three days, the New York Times attacked him. And what
he said he learned from that was that being attacked
actually sent a signal that he was building condos, and
he had dozens and dozens of people calling to say
(12:32):
if they could buy a condo, and he decided, you know,
any news helps, just doesn't matter, good or bad. Any
news helps, And that's the base of the rise of
Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
You know, it's interesting because especially the ice skating, how
you laid the rank, how you lay that out, because
he is so different, right, Like, he just comes up
with these ideas and then oftentimes they're criticized, but then
when you really think about it, you're like, actually, it's
really smart.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Right, He's a problem solver.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
He's taking a totally different lens to government, which is
healthy because clearly things aren't working out so great, and
even on tariffs. Right, it's something that we haven't done
in modern history as much, and it is sort of
an outside the box idea. Do you think are these
turffs a good idea or are we just kind of
(13:18):
like not catching up with where he is on it,
and the media is just not understanding or I guess,
how do you assess all of that well?
Speaker 3 (13:25):
And to take the example of tariffs, he talked about
tariffs in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
He said America is.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Getting ripped off the way of these really bad deals
and that other countries were exploiting us and taking advantage
of us.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
So it's not like it's new.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
And I think he began to look at the work
of William McKinley, who had passed the Great terr Effact
and who ran for President I and McKinley's approach.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
Was to have high barriers.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
To importing, create the biggest possible American manufacturing base, have
very high labor payments. We had the best paid workers
in the world. And that was a mind It was
a clear model of how to do things. And so
Trump has been enamored. I think of two things. One
is that he can get foreigners to pay for the
right to come and sell in America, and the other
(14:18):
is that is the largest market in the world. He
has enormous leverage in negotiating, and he likes making deals,
and the terrified allows him to go country by country,
making deals that at the margin improve the American economy.
And I think you're going to see that by the
time he's done, he will have had a very substantial
increase in revenue paid for by foreigners, and he will
(14:42):
have rebuilt an American industrial base on a scale that
people would have thought was impossible. And you saw some
of this when he went to Saudi Arabia and gut
her in the Loe and four days he comes back
with literally a trillion dollars, not a billion, a trillion
dollars sales and a trillion dollars in investment commitments. While
(15:04):
you do that, and you're going to really have I
think by next summer you're going to have a Trump
economic boom that people will be amazed by.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
And I liked the line in his speech in Saudi
Arabia about how the future of the region was commerce,
not chaos.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Well exactly, I mean, and he has a vision.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
And it occurred to me, actually, and I have not
ever talked him about it, but instead of talking about
turning Gaza into a riviera, he should have talked about
turning Gaza into Dubai. I mean, here's this extraordinary city
in the middle of the of the Persian Gulf with
the highest hotel willing in the world and proof that
(15:43):
you can be an Arab and have a very modern,
very commercial society. Killis and I were there a few
years ago. We went to mass with about eight hundred people,
most of them from India and from the Philippines, and
they were practicing Catholicism right in the middle of a
Muslim country. Because it's a it's a very modern, very open,
very commercially oriented country.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
We've got to take a quick commercial break more with
speaker new Gingrich. On the other side, you know, the
Democrat Party has been struggling.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
You know, they've experienced low approval ratings.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
They're spending all this money trying to figure out men,
which is like, if you're working that hard, then clearly
you don't get you know, they try to figure out
a group of voters.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Do you think the reason they're struggling so.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Much is the basis of the conversation we're having so
much or we've had so far that he's just so different,
you know, and so they don't know how to respond
to that.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Why do you think they're struggling?
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Look, I think the core problem of the Democratic party
is that they have been taken over by a left wing,
anti American, anti male, anti white, anti business ideology captured
by somebody like AOC. And if you look at their
(17:00):
more radical members, their views are frankly nuts and they
believe them. I mean they get in rooms and talk
to each other and they believe all this stuff. So
it's not actually Trump. The rise of Trump is in
part being fueled by people who are so turned off. Mean,
Trump had the highest vote among Hispanics of any Republican
(17:22):
in history. He had the highest vote among African American
males of any Republican since Dwight Eisenhower in the nineteen fifties.
And it's partly because they're being driven away by a
Democratic party which is dedicated to crazy values. I mean,
if you look around the country, for example, the number
of Democratic cities and state governments that are sanctuary cities
(17:44):
for illegal criminals. I mean, it's one thing to say
they want to be sanctuaries for people who are here
illegally but have not committed crimes, but they're sanctuary cities
for murderers and rapists and armed robbers. That's a pretty
crazy value system.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
So looking at the midterms.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
I guess one thing I am a little bit concerned
about is, you know, President Trump's so unique and he's
been able to build this coalition that's so different transform
the Republican Party. But I wonder if Republicans can carry
it on. And I just I wonder how they'll do
in the midterms without I mean, even though President Trump's
in office, he's not on the ballot.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
He had look, the.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Only person who can maximize the Republican chance of winning
the midterms is Donald J.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Trump.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
He has to make the midterms a vote in favor
of trump Ism and a vote for President Trump. And
the marginal House members are going to be re elected
if President.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
Trump can turn out the vote.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
But we've got I think thirteen Democrat Democrats in the
seats that Trump carried and another twenty one Democrats and
seats that Trump got within twenty within five percent, And
if he can turn out the vote, We've had this unique,
extraordinary transition. Where in the old days, it was the
Democrats who had trouble in off years because their voter
(19:08):
base included a lot of people who would only vote
for president.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Now we've switched.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
We're the Party of working Americans, and we're the party
of young people in a way that was unthinkable ten
years ago, and so we now have to worry about
turning out the vote among people who aren't in the
habit of voting in off yr elections. And I think
the only way to do that is to an affect psychologically.
Put Trump on the ballot in every single campaign and
(19:34):
have the Trump voters decide that they have to vote
because it's about whether or not the Trump mega revolution
continues or whether the Democrats take control and do everything
they can to block it for two years. If that
gets driven through and that's the choice in election day,
then I think, in fact, we'll have a big enough
turnout to win the election.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
What it's sort of ironic, because the media and the
Democrats have tried to lead throughout the year, is that
Trump's talk, but in fact, like he's the reason people
are turning out in support of the Republican Party, Like
he's the reason why we have the House, He's the
reason we have the Senate. You know, no one else
would have been able to win the popular vote, but
President Trump heading into twenty twenty eight, do you see
(20:16):
anyone who is able to keep that America first coalition
together and to carry on the mantle or I guess
what happens to the Republican Party beyond this term and
beyond President Trump.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Well, I think President Trump picked JD. Fans, who was
actually a year younger than Richard Nixon when Dwight Eisenewer
picked him in nineteen fifty two. So Vance is now
the youngest vice president of American history. And I think
Trump picked him because he thought he was the most
likely person to carry on the Maga tradition. And I think, frankly,
(20:50):
if Trump is successful, it will be almost inevitable that
JD will become the nominee because he will have stood
next to Trump for four years. I watched them one
Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery as a team, and
you could just sense that the JD was the logical, younger,
next generation version of Trump, and that he and his
(21:13):
wife are going to be very attractive people who I
think will have probably a ninety percent likelihood of being
the Republican nominee and probably a much better than even
chance of being the president.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
He does seem to really respect him, even just you
know the way in which he talks about him. He
does seem to have President Trump does seem to have
a lot of respect for.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
The vice president.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Obviously, there's a lot of conversation right now about the big,
beautiful bill. Obviously everyone's in agreement that it's big, but
is it beautiful?
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Well, given the nature of the American Constitution and the
legislative process, it's very hard to be beautiful while they're
going through the process. Somebody once said that you don't
want to watch making either sausage or laws, because both
of them are pretty hard difficult. I think in the
end we will get a bill because the President will
(22:10):
intervene and listen to people and find a way to
bring people together. We will only get the bill because
of Trump. And it's tricky because there are things the
Senators want that can will not pass the House, and
there are things that House members want that will not
pass the Senate. And getting everybody in the same room
to understand this is the most you can get, but
(22:30):
it beats not getting anything is going to take time,
and people have to frankly get worn down by the
process and finally come to a decision. Yeah, I've gotten
all I can get, and I'm gonna vote yes. Because
for this bill to fail would be unthinkable, and therefore
they've got to find you know, it's not there yet,
but they've got to find a way to get to
a yes that will pass both the House and the Senate.
(22:53):
I think Senator Thune is doing a very good job
as the majority leader in the Senate, and I think
that Mike Johnson's doing an astonishing job as the Speaker
of the House. And with Trump's leadership, the three of them,
I think will eventually get to a bill that will pass.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
You know, any spearhead of this process before, when you
were speaker. Why is it so hard for Congress to
cut spending?
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Well, because everybody who wants the money is excited and
aroused and angry, and everybody who would like to balance
the budget is soft and passive and not going to
get in a fight. And I found that this is
part of my advice to fiscal conservatives. There are two
big things I would advise them to do. First, resurrect
the balance budget as the goal, because if the goal
(23:41):
is balancing the budget, people will tolerate spending cuts dramatically better.
After if you're just running a smaller deficit, Why can't
I have mine because it's going to be a deficit anyway.
But if the goal is a balance budget, then people
will tolerate cuts that they will not tolerate in a
period of deficits. Second, I think you have to make
(24:04):
America healthy again as a core goal, because if people
are healthy and don't need health care, then the cost
of health care will drop dramatically, not because you're cutting it,
but because people are healthier. And I think you can
get probably four percent of the gross domestic product just
by implementing making Americans healthy again, and that four percent
(24:26):
is enough basically to get you to a balanced budget.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
How would you assess President Trump's job so far? How
do you think he's doing in this term and how
would you sort of compare that to his first term.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Well, I think in scale of achievement, it's an a plus.
As I've said earlier, he currently is on a path
to be far and away the biggest change agent since FDR,
and if he can win in twenty six and twenty eight,
he will have been an even bigger change agent I
think than FDR. But I would also say that i'd
(25:01):
probably give him an a minus for style. I mean,
he gets involved in fights, he doesn't need, and he
gets involved.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
In it is entertaining, though, I mean, I.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
Mean it's entertaining, but it's not necessarily helpful. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
So, but he's still you know, he's he's simply an
extraordinary person. And that's why when I wrote Trump's Tiumph
and we began in October because I was sure.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
He was going to win.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
It's it's hard to imagine anybody else having the endurance
and the courage and the energy and frankly the intelligence.
I mean, this is a very very smart guy. And
Left made a huge mistake by rigging the election in
twenty and giving him four years in the wilderness to
think about things and to put together what he really
wants to accomplish. And I think he's going to be
(25:48):
extraordinarily effective.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
What's the thing?
Speaker 2 (25:50):
People never give him credit for how smart he is.
And I think one thing that really stood out to
me this in the past election cycle, particularly and particularly
in these line, longer form interviews that he did with
you know, his sit down interview with Joe Rogan or
the interview he did with Elon on X.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
I mean, the guy is brilliant.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Like name one Democrat who could sit down with anyone
and have a two to three hour conversation in depth
and be able to really understand the issues, dive into
the issues, and then also present ways to solve them.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, Bill Clinton, Yeah, well, yeah, actually that's a good point.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
Well, Bill Clinton.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Bill Clinton is the one modern Democrat who could who
could do Joe Rogan and be fine. Nobody else could.
Obama couldn't. Obviously, Biden would be silly. And and I
don't know of any Democratic governor or senator who could
go through three or four hours like that and have
the range of knowledge and the range of common sense.
(26:45):
And they're they're prohibited by their ideology from having solutions.
They can't take on the teachers' union, they can't take
on the government bureaucracy, they can't take on their left
wing allies, so they can't solve things. I mean, it's
a huge problem for the Democrat Party right now. It's
become the party of.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
No well and yeah, the party of twenty percent issues.
You know, it's like it's sort of baffling, Like even
on the men and women's sports, it's like, you know,
eighty percent of the country disagrees with you, yet they're
digging in in states like California or Maine.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
You know, or favoring the return of people who are
deported for being criminals, or being offended that we're locking
up people who are criminals, you know. I mean, you
go through item after item. We do a project. We
run a project called the America's New Majority Project, which
people can see if they go to America's New Majority
Project dot com. And it is astonishing to me that
(27:40):
the Democrats are consistently on the fifteen to twenty percent
range and it's gradually wearing their party down.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
We've got to take a quick commercial break, but if
you're enjoying this episode so far, please post on social
media or share with your friends. What's interesting is I mean,
if you think about at least the immigration issue, like
I wonder if this was thought out or because if
you think about it's kind of genius. Because Joe Biden
(28:08):
earned the Democrat party they led in like millions of
illegal aliens to the country. Obviously they want some sort
of pathway to citizenship and pathway to vote for them,
so import like this new voter base, and then it's
virtually impossible to deport all of them because judges keep
trying to block President Trump's attempts, and he's trying to
be creative and finding ways to deport them so they
(28:29):
might be stuck here, and so like, that's kind of brilliant.
And what's the long term impact of that on the country?
And do you think that that was some thought out
master plan of theirs or it just sort of happened.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
No. I think what's happened is that the district level judges,
the left wing, once appointed by Obama and by Biden,
have become the last stand trying to stop trump Ism,
and so they made decisions which are clearly unconstitutional. I
do not believe the dish judges have the ability to
(29:02):
issue a nationwide injunction usurping the President United States. I mean,
the idea that some local district judge who's never been
elected and is not particularly an expert on the subject
matter can overrule the incumbent chief of staff, a chief
executive in president United States is crazy. And Jefferson said
rule by judges would be an oligarchy. Lincoln made the
(29:25):
eighteen fifty eight Senate race around the Supreme Court being
wrong on the dred Scott decision that extended slavery to
the whole country. In fact, Lincoln lectured the Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court who was sitting in front of
him when he gave his inaugural address in eighteen sixty one.
And I'm convinced that Lincoln in part said government of
(29:45):
the people, by the people, and for the people as
a rebuke to the judges. And so I think that
we are right at the edge of a genuine constitutional
crisis in which judges are grotesque overreaching and doing things
that they don't have the power to do in areas
that they don't have the knowledge of, and they are
(30:06):
trying to usurp somebody who got seventy seven million votes,
Well they got zero.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Well what's the path forward on that? Like, what do
we do about it?
Speaker 4 (30:15):
Well?
Speaker 3 (30:16):
I testified in the House Judiciary Committee a couple of
months ago, and I started my testimony by reading the
names of fourteen people who turned out to be the
fourteen judges who were abolished by Jefferson in the Judicial
Act of eighteen o two. He didn't impeach him, he
just eliminated the courts. So one step would be for
(30:37):
the appropriations committees to simply abolish the payment for the
judges who are nuts. Another step would be to pass
finish passing the bill which Daryl Aia passed in the
House which blocks district judges from issuing nationwide injunctions. There's
a parallel bill by Senator Grassley and the Senate. If that,
(30:59):
if those two bills could be passed, then that would
frankly eliminate the district judge level problem. But there are
steps that can be taken and should be taken. The
founding fathers were very clear if you read the Federalist papers,
that the Court was to be the weakest of the three,
not the strongest, and that the Supreme Court was supreme
(31:21):
only among courts. It's not supreme over the House and Senate.
And the founding fathers would have thought it was absurd
to have some of the kind of power invested in
the judiciary that has currently invested in them.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
And they would have said that it's.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
An infringement on the right of a people to govern
themselves to have a small bunch of judges who think that,
you know, they can be a floating constitutional convention by
four to three or five to four majorities in which
on one swing judge suddenly becomes the equivalent of an
entire constitutional convention.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
In the past few weeks, we have seen someone torch
the Pennsylvania Governor's mansion Josh Shapiro because he's Jewish, two
Jews executed at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, and
then over last weekend we saw utterly Jewish people set
on fire and boulder at Colorado. How dangerous is the
(32:20):
political left And have they gotten more dangerous since your
time in office.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Well, they've become much more extreme and much more violent,
much more self righteous, convinced that their moral purity allows
them to do whatever they want to, and I think
more desperate. I think we have to clamp down on
anti Semitism. Anti Semitism should be the equivalent of the
ku Klux Klan. I mean, people would not tolerate the
(32:46):
ku Klux Klan demonstrating at Columbia University or Harvard. They
wouldn't tolerate the ku Klux Klan trying to kill people
to a Black church. And I think that we have
to have the same decision that being anti Submitica simply
unacceptable in American society, that if you are here on
a visa, we should expel you. If you're here as
(33:08):
an American. We should have very strict penalties and we
should make it very very expensive to be openly anti submitted.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
You know, we saw with a suspect in Boulder, Colorado.
He was denied a visa in two thousand and five,
granted one under the Biden administration, and then he overstayed,
and that was also granted a work permit after overstaying.
And then yet the Trump administration has been condemned for
trying to revoke visas. Do we I mean, I feel
(33:38):
like we should just do a complete overhaul in the
visa process, Like why are we letting these people in
the United States? Like what does that vetting look like?
Who are we letting into the United States? You know,
what are your thoughts on that and which I've done
about it?
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Look, I think that's why they've for example, suspended student visas,
because we we have to build a very different system.
I would say that unless you are prepared to accept
that the US Constitution is the law of the land,
and that, for example, you couldn't have sharia in the
context of the US Constitution.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
I think anybody who is.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Either a member of the Chinese Communist Party or whose
family can be blackmailed by the Chinese Communist Party. It's
very dubious to me why you would give them the
student visa, because you know that they're going to become
they have a very high possibility becoming spies. And we
now know that that's a real problem or and a
real challenge. And we've we've had some very sobering reports
(34:40):
such as the couple, for example, who had brought in
a fungus which could have been devastating as an epidemic,
and there's no good reason for them to have brought
it in, and they brought it in secretly and in
violation of our national security laws. And so I think
we've got to become much tougher and much clearer our
(35:00):
unwillingness to accept foreign threats being injected into our society.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Yeah, one thing, you know, I'd love your perspective on
this historically.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
But what's interesting to.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Me is we are in a time right now where
you know, fifty percent of the country like they believe,
or probably less than that, but they believe President Trump
is a threat to democracy, like they basically view him
as Hitler, as they have pointed out previously and then
on the right over the past four years in the
Bio administration, We're like, this guy is a threat to democracy.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
So you have half of.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
The country believing the other part. You know that there
were threat to democracy and vice versa, So how do
we navigate that moving forward? Have you have you ever
seen the country this divided from a historical perspective, and like,
what do we do about it moving forward?
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Well, when it was this divided in the eighteen fifties, right, yeah,
you know, I mean, but we.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
Shouldn't kill ourselves. I had a very famous Lincoln scholar.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
I guess more in modern history it probably should have.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Asked, there have been periods when we've had some limited threats,
but nothing on this scale. And I had a Lincoln
scholar tell me in October that the hostility to Trump
very much represented the hostility of the slave states to Lincoln.
And it was for the same reason because Trump represented
(36:18):
the end of the left wing elites worldview, just as
Lincoln had ultimately meant the end of slaveholding in the
Southern culture. And I think that we have to understand
this is a real cultural civil war. This is the
people sincerely, deeply believe things on the left which you
and I would think are crazy, but they believe them,
(36:41):
and they operate on those beliefs, and they're not going
to give them up easily. And they feel extraordinarily threatened
by the MAGA movement and by Trump, and by the
whole notion that we are not going to tolerate you with,
for example, that we're going to insist that boys should
not be competing in girls' sports. Well, if you are
(37:01):
truly on the left, that that's a horrifying idea, and
there's a sign that we're totally insensitive.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
Or if we insist.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
That, uh, you know, the only flag you should fly
in front of a US embassy is the American flag, well,
from the standpoint of the gay pride movement, that's that's
a horrifying idea. Or if we insist that parents have
a right to know what's being told there are children
in class, then you have a large part of the
teachers union that feels that we have now usurped their
(37:30):
role as the ultimate controller of children. Uh And and
many elements the teachers union are anti parent and don't
want parents in the classroom, don't want parents involved. So
I mean, I think these are these are real, fundamental,
profound differences and they're not going to go away easily.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
We're finding out a lot about Joe Biden's mental a
client well and office. Obviously we all knew it at
the time, but we're finding out just you know, how
deep it went and how.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Bad it was.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
How much should Republicans focus on it? Should Republicans have hearings?
You know, what do you like? Is that looking back?
Should we be looking forward? Or you know, if you
were Speaker Johnson or Majority Leader Thoon, how.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Would you handle this issue in Congress?
Speaker 3 (38:17):
Well, look, I think it's probably going to turn out
to be the biggest scandal in American history. You had
you clearly sometime I think in twenty twenty three Biden
lost the ability to be president. And for example, after
the election, on one day, they commuted twenty four hundred sentences.
(38:43):
Now it was then with an auto pen Who picked
the twenty four hundred? Why were they included? Why was
that particular action undertaken? Who decided it? Because clearly Biden didn't,
So there was somebody basically playing the role of president.
Because it's clearly a presidential prerogative in the Constitution, and
(39:04):
you can just go through item after item like that
I mean Secretary of Energy right coming to the other
day that they had shoveled his award, was shoveled seventy
three billion dollars in grants out of the Energy Department
in a very short period of time, trying to get
the money out before Trump could come in and block it. Well, again,
(39:24):
who's making those kind of decisions? Because I think you're
going to find that there's almost no presidential control and
no presidential influence except in the very broadest sense of things,
but that overall, at some point, as I said, I
think it's in twenty three, Biden simply ceased to be
(39:45):
capable of following the information and following the ideas and
making big decisions.
Speaker 4 (39:51):
So somebody was, and if not him, who.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
I also find it interesting because even going back to
twenty nineteen, you know, we had that basement campaign during
the twenty twenty presidential election, and they blamed COVID, But
now increasingly it's looking like no, he was just already
experiencing mental decline and that was an excuse to hide
him in the basement. And even they were saying in
twenty nineteen in this book that he forgot the name
(40:17):
of an AID who had been with him since I
think nineteen eighty one, so it's basically a family member
at this point. You know, So this wasn't even just
a you know, a twenty twenty four issue. It seems
like this was a twenty twenty issue.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
I think it could have been, except that you had
the propaganda media so deeply committed to propping him up.
Which is why I think having somebody like Jake Tapper
write a book is hysterical, because so Taper was one
of the chief defenders of Biden, and now he's writing
a book saying that the media failed to cover this
when he was part of the people who failed to
cover it.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Well, speaker, I'm sure you saw did he just did it?
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Creane gene Pierre, of all people, I mean, that's like
you were the mouthpiece, yes for all questions.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
I think she's setting up to sell books.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
So she's now left the Democratic Party, creating news by
becoming an independent. Frankly, I suspect a number of Democrats
are glad she's left. I always thought that she was
a peculiarly bad press person for the president, and she
didn't help him at all. I didn't think and that's
a very hard job anyway, But if you look at
(41:26):
the contrast with how Caroline Lovet's doing it, it's astonishingly
how difference the impact is.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
One thing I think we found.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
You know, it's been interesting with all the DOGE information
that has surfaced, is you look, I mean you look
at all this money, like even the Stacy Abrams. I
think it was like two billion dollar grant that she received,
if memory serves me correct. I mean, how much of
government spending is just like a money laundering scheme for politicians.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Well, I mean, I think that's a good example where
we have to get to the bottom of it. I mean,
what was she doing for the money? Did she actually
do it? The amount was astonishing. But look, one of
the key parts of the Democratic Party is that it's
a machine that's held together by money. And this is
why they're they're in for a very difficult challenge because
(42:18):
if the Republicans and Trump can cut off the flow
of government money and taxpayer money to these machines, they're
going to start collapsing because they're not held together by affection.
They're held together by cash. And that's why if you
watch both Obama and Biden, they were very very big
on giving out money. The various green issues was probably
(42:42):
their best cover for doing it. But they were paying
off a lot of people with a lot of money.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
And the number of corporations that failed.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Once they could no longer access you know that kind
of money is just astonishing me. You go back to
go look at the various green firms that would get two, three,
four hundred million dollars and then fail deliver nothing. And
it was all basically a way.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Of paying people off, like Clendra.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
That's the classic example. And it came under Obama, which
is a key part of this. And I keep talking
about the Obama Biden connection because I think we're I
think we're missing it if we if we just focus
on Biden. Was this was a twelve year I think
of Biden as the Obama's third term. This was a
twelve year project of trying to move America to the
(43:33):
left and trying to build a machine with taxpayer money.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Quick break stay with Us.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Has any other Democrat president done as much harm to
the country than Obama?
Speaker 4 (43:45):
Well, I mean, you can.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
Make an argument for a Buchanan and just before the
Civil War, but if you look at the last century,
I would say no that. But again, I think what
you had was the Obama team came back in the
White House with Biden, and everything which Obama had started
just got a lot sicker and a lot worse over
the overtime. And in a sense, if Trump had had
(44:11):
accepted defeat and gone away, he would have been sort
of a brief interruption in the gradual decay of America.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
And it was. It was part of the reason I
wrote Trump's Triumph. It is just the sheer courage of saying.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
No, I'm not leaving, I'm going to stay here, I'm
going to fight it out, and I'm going to get
this country back on track. And then I think he
interpreted the providential moment of turning his head at the
exact second necessary.
Speaker 4 (44:38):
To avoid getting killed at Butler.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
I think that gave him a real sense that God
had saved his life for the purpose of making America
great again. And it's made him a much more i think,
focused and a much more reverential person than he was
in the first term.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
Probably the moment that won him the election, because you know,
America is really in need of a fighter, and we
had an incredibly weak president and here's this guy that like,
survives a bullet and his immediate instinct is to stand
up and say a fight, fight, fight, Like who is.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Made of that? You know? It's like, yeah, it was remarkable.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
It was really one of the iconic moments in defining him,
as was I think the picture they took in the
Fulton County Sheriff's office, the mugshot where Trump looks very angry,
And I think I was told that in a number
of black barbershops they were putting that picture up because
it showed that the man was after him, just like
they were after in their mind, their community.
Speaker 4 (45:35):
So it actually created a common identity.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
As somebody who's written multiple books about Trump, what new
insights or perspectives did you cover in writing this book,
Trump's Triumph.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
Well, I think that there's a continuity to Trump, So
in that sense, I don't think there's a giant changes,
but I think his ability as a communicator. I mean,
you can't imagine anybody else passing out French fries at
McDonald's and then riding in a garbage truck and going
(46:09):
into a fifty thousand person rally wearing a garbage collector's
vest and saying they say this makes me look thinner.
Maybe I should wear it for the rest of the campaign.
Speaker 4 (46:17):
I mean that.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
Ability to connect with Americans, remembering that eighty seven percent
of the country goes to McDonald's at least once a year,
and forty million Americans, including Jeff Beza's work at McDonald's.
He has a sense of where the average American is
better than any politician I've ever seen. And at the
same time, I think you see this growth in my
(46:41):
book on Trump's triumph. He really did become a more
serious person and a more reverential person, particularly after the
second assassination attempt. I was talking with speaker Mike Johnson
at one point and he said he happened to be
at more on logo when the FBI or when the
Secret Service came in to brief Trump on this second
(47:02):
effort to kill him, which was the guy that they
caught in the golf course. And he said that really
shook Trump and made it different from there was this
nut in Butler too, there really is a serious desire
to kill me. And Johnson went off with Trump to
a private room and they prayed for two hours, and
(47:22):
I think that that was the moment where Trump really
believed that he had a moral duty to implement what
he saw is God's desire to make America great again.
And it reminded me Callissa and I had done two movies,
Nine Days to Change the World about John Paul the
second and then Run The Destiny about Reagan, And when
(47:45):
the two of them got together for the very first time,
they were comparing notes.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
They'd both been actors.
Speaker 3 (47:51):
John Paul was an actor before he became a priest,
and of course Reagan had been very successful as an actor,
and they'd.
Speaker 4 (47:57):
Both been shot and survived, and they talked about but
what does.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
It mean that God has spared us? And their mutual
conclusion was that they'd been spared in order to defeat
the Soviet Empire, and so they agreed that they'd have
an alliance to do just that, and of course, a
few years later, the Soviet Empire disappeared. I think in
Trump's case was a similar moment where it hits him
that if God had not intervened, he would be dead,
(48:24):
and so he actually owed the rest of his life
to try to implement what God's will was. And I
think that that made him a significantly different, more mature
person from the guy who ran in twenty sixty.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
You know, your wife was the previously served as the
ambassador to the Holy See. We have an American pope.
What are your thoughts on him and what does that
mean for our country?
Speaker 3 (48:50):
Well, Calicia, who knew Pope Francis pretty well and liked him.
They were actually friends. She went to the funeral. We
were surprised when the white smoke went up and out
came an American. I don't think any of us expected that.
Her line was that he's good for the church and
(49:12):
he's good for America, and I think that's probably right.
I mean, he's a genuine American, but he also served
in Peru for a very long time, so he has
a real feel for third world countries and for the
nature of poverty in these rural communities. And I think
he's going to be a very successful pope at a
(49:35):
sort of stabilizing and growing the church. I think you'll
have a real effect on young people and a real
focus on bringing the new generation into the church, on
values and on attitudes that are very very central to
being a Catholic and being a Christian. And in that sense,
I think he's going to be a very significant force
(49:57):
moving in the right direction. He's very committed to trying
to help mediate things. I think I noticed that he
was calling Putin, tried to to talk some things, and
he President Trump has already invited him to come to
the US, and I think that there's a real possibility
that will happen. Apparently JD Vance met with him. Jadevance
(50:21):
was the last major figure to meet with Pope Francis
before almost literally as soon as he was inaugurated, and
I think they had a sense that this is somebody
that can really work with and I think that will
be You know, there are a billions, three hundred many
Catholics around the world, and working together you can accomplish
(50:42):
big things. Cloister had done that with working on everything
from immigrants to humans who had been sold into slavery,
to problems of poverty, and so she had a real
sense of the complexity of the church. And I think
that the church can be an enormous force for good.
(51:04):
And I think that this Pope is going to be
very open to working with the American government.
Speaker 1 (51:10):
Before we go through what else about Trump's triumph?
Speaker 2 (51:13):
Would you like to convey to the audience that we
haven't addressed yet well.
Speaker 4 (51:17):
I think two things. One that it is.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
Truly a miraculous story of a comeback that probably no
one else could have pulled off. And the second is
that you have to think ahead. You have to look
at the future. When he talks about America entering a
golden age, he means it. And I think with the
two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of our founding next year,
if we spend half of our time looking back at
how we got here and half of our time looking
(51:42):
forward to the next two hundred and fifty years, we'll
have some sense of what an extraordinary thing it is
to be an American and what a remarkable opportunity we
have to create a better future, not just for ourselves,
but for the whole world.
Speaker 4 (51:54):
And I think we owe a great deal of that
to Donald J. Trump.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
Speaker New Gingridge, it's always such an honor to have
you on the show. You just have such a depth
of knowledge that no one else has. I could ask
you a billion questions because I feel like I learned
so much from you, and it's truly an honor.
Speaker 3 (52:09):
Lisa, Lisa, You're so flattering. I've always glad to come
back in the show because you make me feel.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
Good perfect, then I'll keep having you back.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
But I truly always learn so much from you, so
it really is an honest sir, And thank you for
being so being so generous with your time. We really
appreciate it. Glad to do it though a speaker New Gingrich.
We appreciate him for taking the time to come on
the show and being so generous with his time. Appreciate
you guys at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday,
but of course you can listen throughout the week until
next time.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show News
Hosts And Creators
Clay Travis
Buck Sexton
Show Links
WebsiteNewsletterPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.