Newt Gingrich | Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends | Jan 4, 2023

NEWT:

Good morning. How are you today?

NEWT:

Well, I think they believe -- remember, they are not really blackmailing McCarthy, they're blackmailing the conference on the votes yesterday; they were losing 202 to 20. And in a healthy, free society, you figure 202 to 20 vote tells you something. But this 20 has gotten together and decided they can not only blackmail the Republican conference; in fact, they are blackmailing the American people. Remember, we didn't get the vote yesterday to repeal the 87,000 IRS agents. We didn't get the announcement by McCarthy that there would be hearings on the border so Democrats would be forced to go and look at the disaster. We did not get the kind of steps forward in organizing the China select committee to look at what the Chinese are doing. So, just remember, these blackmailers just aren't blackmailing the Republican party. They're blackmailing the whole country. Their game -- I don't know what their end game is. I don’t know why they think that 20 people can't dictate to 202. That's a real problem.

NEWT:

Look, it's the equivalent of a temper tantrum. They lost. When they had a candidate in the Republican conference, he got 15% of the vote. Kevin got 85%. If you look at who donated and who campaigned and who helped, Kevin did more than all 20 of them combined to create the majority. So, they have got a leader who helped win seats in 2020 when the rest of the party was going down. He helped win seats in 2022. He has crisscrossed the country in 49 states in the last cycle. He has raised hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, if you look at how much he helped raised for some of these blackmailers, it's embarrassing. People there who got millions of dollars campaign from Kevin and his allies, and they don’t care. I don't understand the psychology. I think this is a psychological problem not a political problem. They say they are for a balanced budget. Kevin is for balanced budget as you remember as speaker I helped balance the budget for four straight years for the only time in your lifetime. I'm happy to sit down and help them balance the federal budget. That's not what they want. I don't know what they want. They want somebody, not Kevin, who is somehow going to get 218 votes even though Kevin has 50 or 100 members who aren't going to vote for anybody else. So, I don't see what they think their end game is.

NEWT:

Well, I would say, first of all, Kevin McCarthy has a long record as a conservative. I have worked with Kevin for years and years. I would say second, the Commitment to America, which Kevin authored, is a very solid conservative document. And I would say, third, I don't know of a single demand they have made on policy that he hasn't said yes. Because he is as conservative as they are. Now, they are saying somehow they are going to find a magician who they can trust, which basically means that they will blindly trust anybody but Kevin. This tells me. This is a personality problem and it's a look at me, look at me desire for public attention problem. But it's not a political problem in a traditional sense. And they are going to lose. Do they think the other 202 members are going to roll over and allow them to blackmail the country and blackmail the conference? Do they think back home that their supporters who thought they were electing a Republican are going to help cheerfully reelect a blackmailer? If this goes on for weeks and it could. The longest vote was 2 months and took 133 ballots in 1855. The most recent long vote took nine ballots. If this goes on for day after day and people are watching C-SPAN and these 20 people are making the Republicans look like idiots. There's not going to be a big premium back home to go home and say proudly yes I'm a blackmailing idiot, please reelect me. I think they are running. If they don't find a way to get to a solution today, I think they are running a real risk of being repudiated at the polls and they're basically signing their resignation letters.

NEWT:

Well, they look pretty stupid. Remember, this is a system where people often look stupid. Remember, Hunter Biden’s laptop, a lot of stupid things. I think it is about to move beyond the period where it is interesting and fascinating into a period where it is disgusting. I think that’s why the pressure on the 20 today. Find out something you want that Kevin, and the conference can give you. Declare victory. Get this over with. Otherwise, 2 or 3 or four days from now and no reason to believe that Kevin, who has spent years earning the right to be speaker, years, electing people. Years raising money, no reason to believe he is going to cave. So, these guys are right now trapped in a dead end.