Newt Gingrich on Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends | January 11, 2021

NEWT:

Look, I mean, at a human level you have to respect that. When I was Speaker, we had two policemen killed while they were on duty by a guy who was mentally ill. It's a very frightening moment. Calista was reminding me when she was working on the House Agriculture Committee on 9/11, the police came by and said run down the road away from the Capitol. I sympathize with the level of fear that people felt but I think it's leading them to some steps that are going to be very counterproductive from their standpoint. First of all, if Trump is so unpopular, they don't need to pass anything. If down deep Trump is that popular, then having a bunch of politicians in Washington trying to block him from running is the worst possible step they could take. Once we have passed this immediate period they will give him a whole new cause. They are better off to ignore Trump for the moment, focus on the really big issues. COVID is a disaster, and I don't think the Biden people are going to be dramatically more effective than the Trump team was. China is on the march, and we are going to in the next few years take a terrible beating. The Iranians are aggressive we have no solution for that. The Europeans are falling apart. They just signed an agreement with China that basically creates a Chinese European alliance. There are a lot of things out there. And of course most Americans are still trapped in their homes. They are still faced with social distancing. Their children aren't getting a decent education. If you are a small business, you are being destroyed by the politicians' decisions. There are so many big things we need to focus on that it is somehow tragic to have the news media and people like Speaker Pelosi absorbed by politics in its narrowest and cheapest way.

NEWT:

Look, the smartest thing President-elect Biden could do would be to calmly put out a note saying that he disapproves of pursuing personal vendettas and invite the Senate Republicans, all of them, to come to a meeting before the inaugural to sit down and listen to them and indicate to the country at large that he actually wants to govern with both Democrats and Republicans. That would give him a better launch for his inauguration than anything he could do. If they stay as narrowly partisan as they are now, you look at the new Democratic House rules that were just adopted that eliminate the Republicans' ability to even offer an amendment. This was a power grab by Pelosi that's unbelievable. You look at those, by the way, the very same rules which outlawed mother, father, brother, sister and 29 words, and I don't see how most of the marginal members are going to go home and defend it. They voted for stuff that's insane. We have seen no evidence of trying to come together and every evidence of the left seeing this as the big moment, including, of course, the oligarchs and the internet giants who I think are way overreaching in setting up what will presently be a catastrophe for them.

NEWT:

It's not complicated. AOC wants to be important. Nancy Pelosi represents a different generation, and the truth is when it got down to a secret ballot vote, AOC lost by 46-12 in a vote to get a seat on Energy and Commerce. AOC is a lot smaller than she seems, but Nancy Pelosi is, in fact, two generations older and could be her grandmother. I think that's probably now a liability.