Newt Gingrich Talks to Us About Biden and His New Book

BUCK: They called it the Republican Revolution, the Revolution of ’94 — and yes, even the Gingrich Revolution. It was a sweeping red victory likes of which we are hoping to maybe have some echoes of in this upcoming midterm election. Joining us now, we have the man most at the center of that Republican Revolution of ’94, former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. Mr. Speaker, thanks for being with us, sir.

GINGRICH: Well, it’s great to be with you. I was intrigued by that mystery you guys were advertising just now. So, I’m gonna have to shift gears here for a second. But it sounded fascinating. I’m delighted to be with you, and I really appreciate the chance to talk about my new book, Defeating Big Government Socialism, which I think is the most important book I’ve written.

BUCK: Excellent. Yeah, no, we want to ask you about the book for sure, Mr. Speaker. First, though, the Joe Biden situation. I’m sure you saw over the weekend the New York Times reporting on this, everyone’s been seeing it for a while. Has there ever been anything like this in living memory in American politics where you have a commander-in-chief or anyone at this level who seems to so clearly not be physically, medically capable of doing the job?

GINGRICH: No, I think you’d have to go back to Woodrow Wilson having a stroke and being literally totally incapacitated. His wife, Edith, actually ran the government. It was a different era, of course, and they just isolated Wilson and kept him in the bedroom. And she became the person who delivered messages and, essentially, she ran the United States government. That’s the only occasion ever that I can remember where you can say you had a president who was literally incapable. In his case, it was a very severe stroke, which he never recovered from.

The notion that you’re watching — and I don’t want to say these things too personally ’cause it’s so painful. But you’re watching somebody who seems to be, on the surface, cognitively decaying right in front of your eyes. I mean, the other day where Joe, they kept prompting him to say God bless America. She said it ’cause she couldn’t get him to say it. And he just, I guess this weekend, when he read the actual text that said, you know, “repeat this line.”

Those are the sort of things where you begin wonder. First of all, it’s very badly staffed, ‘cause you only bring him out when he’s practiced it nine times, and they’re clearly bringing him out without any practice, and the result is he’s embarrassing for the country. Somebody made the comment that on his European trip, all the European leaders treated him kind of like the aging grandfather who they had to make sure he didn’t hurt himself. That is not good.

CLAY: Yeah. Mr. Speaker, can he continue for to 30 more months, in your mind? I know you’re not a doctor and we aren’t, either. But as you watch, to your point, every single day it appears that his cognitive decline is getting worse. I believe he’s almost the exact same age as you. I assume that you’ve known Joe Biden at least on some level over the years.

GINGRICH: Oh, yeah. We served together in the Congress.

CLAY: He clearly doesn’t have his fastball anymore. What happens?

GINGRICH: Well, Biden was never the smartest guy in the room. Biden’s strength was that he was a happy-go-lucky, friendly politician in a very, very small state, which was… Winning the Senate race was equivalent of running for county commission in Birmingham or Cleveland or what have you, and he was a gladhander. Remember, his first presidential race ended because he idiotically quoted verbatim a speech by Neil Kinnock, the labor leader, about his rural village upbringing.

Think to yourself: What kind of a mind…? This is Biden over 20 years ago. What kind of a mind thinks that you can take a quote about a Welsh coal mining village and turn it into a quote about your life in Scranton, and not have the national press corps presently figure out that this whole thing was plagiarized? He just plagiarized it. So he had collapsed, he got out of the race because he just… He can’t hit Major League pitching. In fact, he probably can’t hit AAA pitching.

He’s now slower and he’s weaker. We’re about the same age. I’m fortunately, I guess, in a little bit better shape and I thank God for that. But you’re looking at a guy… It’s frightening to have the commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world relied upon by allies all over the planet this incapable. And, of course, it means that the real power goes to his staff — and that his staff is very, very left wing, far and away the most radical staff ever in the White House and in the executive branch. And so, these people are running amok. They’re doing things that virtually no American favors.

BUCK: We’re speaking to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. He’s got a book out — Defeating Big Government Socialism: Saving America’s Future — it’s just on this week. You should all pick up a copy. Mr. Speaker, you were right at the crest of that Red Wave in ’94. Are you feeling like we’re heading into a similar situation now in this midterm? What are you seeing?

GINGRICH: Yeah, I think you guys are right about that. It’s a combination of just bad performance. The price of gasoline, the price of food, the number of people being killed, the scale of the openness of the border. Just go down the list. But in addition, I think there’s a sense that things are just spinning out of control, that when you look at it, people don’t want Big Government socialism; they don’t want radical, woke policies; they don’t want children being taught that if you’re white, you’re bad.

The degree to which the Democratic Party is dedicated to a series of radical beliefs is astonishing. It is not in any way the Democratic Party that I competed with 20 or 30 years ago, and all of that is sinking in. Part of idea of Defeating Big Government Socialism is this is the fourth wave of failure. We had a big wave of failure under Lyndon Johnson, another wave of failure under Jimmy Carter, a wave of failure under Barack Obama, and now we have the Biden failure. But we’ve never closed the deal with the American people.

We’ve never convinced them it’s not just a personality problem, but that the basic core policies are wrong, that the core values are wrong, and that you have to decide are you gonna root out those kinds of policies and those kind of values. And that’s why I talk about Big Government socialism and try to lay out the case in the book that any citizen can pick up the book and take chapters and use them to go to their friends or to go to their local coffee shop and win the argument about what’s going wrong. Because what’s going wrong is a matter of principles. It’s not a matter of personal dysfunction.

CLAY: We’re talking to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Last question for you. You’re in Georgia. There’s been a lot of comparison of Joe Biden to Jimmy Carter. Fair or foul, in your mind? I also know you’re a historian. How would you assess the two men.

GINGRICH: I think it’s very unfair to Carter. Carter was a very smart guy. He was a (garbled audio). He was a nuclear engineer, a very successful farmer. But Carter’s problem was very similar: The values that he was convinced to implement just don’t work. So, he’s a bright guy doing things that aren’t going to work.

BUCK: Bright guy with bad ideas. Everyone should go get the book — Defeating Big Government Socialism — by Newt Gingrich. Mr. Speaker, thank you so much.

GINGRICH: Take care.

CLAY: We will for sure.