An Exclusive Interview with Newt Gingrich

Speaker Newt Gingrich Interviewed By The Valley Patriot

Speaker Gingrich talks about The Border, EPA, Education and More

 

Tom Duggan, Christine Morabito, Justess Bowles
November, 2011

The Valley Patriot was invited to sit with Former Speaker of the House and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. Valley Patriot President Tom Duggan, Tea Party Columnist Christine Morabito and College student Justess Bowles sat with Speaker Gingrich and picked his brain for more than a half hour on November 11th, a week prior to his announcement of his policy on immigration and border enforcement.

(See more Photos in our Facebook Gallery: Gallery 1Gallery 2)

Christine Morabito: In your 21st Century contract with America, (very similar to the one in 1994 that successfully decreased unemployment, creating jobs), you call for citizen involvement. How do you see that manifesting itself?

Gingrich: Well, there are three layers of citizen involvement and, in this sense, the contract is much more complicated than in 1994. There is still a Legislative section, but unlike ‘94’, the current contract also has a “day one” section of executive orders. The current contract is for the presidency, not the speakership. It also has a training program for new presidential appointees, so that they are really, truly change agents. And finally, it has a citizen component. The citizen component has 3 layers.

I always tell people, I don’t ask them to be for me, I ask them to be with me. Because, if they are for me, they are going to vote and say “sure, I hope Newt fixes it”. That’s impossible, I can’t fix it by myself.

So, the first layer is, I want people to be actively engaged.

The second layer is building an interactive system, so that the people can give us feedback for eight solid years. We don’t know how to do this yet, but we are talking about Google, Facebook, YouTube and all of these different techniques. If you do things on this scale, the way we want to do them, or the way you want to do them, we are going to make mistakes but we are going to learn new things, or there will be new technologies emerging to help us.

The more we can build a genuine citizen information system the better. It’s really two ways. This is what makes it hard. We know how to send signals out. I have one million three hundred thousand people on Twitter. So, I can tweet and it’s not hard. But what if 1,300,000 people write me ?

So, we don’t really know today how to structure the information flow so that it’s 2-way. But I want it to be genuine. I also want it to be multi-way so that, as you are doing with the Valley Patriot, if people decide they want to get together for a local project, then people in that area can get together virtually on the internet and have the equivalent of an old fashioned town hall meeting. So, these are the things we are exploring.

The third layer is, I think very, very powerful, and profound. If you are going to take Washington bureaucracy and enforce the 10th Amendment and shrink the Washington bureaucracy, you have to grow citizenship to fill the vacuum. So, for example, a key part of our education reform is simple: Parents have to get involved again.

The reason the PTA is in decline as an ineffective force, and the reason why parents gave up, is that we have bureaucratized the schools. So parents are told that their opinion doesn’t matter; “We actually don’t want you here”.

All you have to go back to is recognizing that the number one characteristic of children who learn is that they have relatives who care. In my case, it was my grandmother who decided that I would be her student. She taught me how to read by the time I was 4, so I entered school with a huge net advantage. So, it’s re-growing citizenship as the 3rd part of the movement.

Duggan: I want to talk about the border for a minute. We had a congressional candidate in Nikki Tsongas’s district, (Sam Meas) a Republican who talked about an idea that I felt was just fascinating and I wanted you to address, if you could. He said that if we took the illegal aliens and we tracked the expenses for healthcare, education or whatever, and we also tracked what countries that they were coming from, we should do is bill the home country for the services that we are providing for their citizens. And if they don’t want to pay for the expenses that we are spending for their citizens, we should take it out of the foreign aid that we give to them. I was just wondering if you could address that, if you thought that was a good idea or if you thought that was something possible?

Gingrich: Well, it is an interesting idea. But I think it misses the underlying point. The Gingrich administration, and this is in the 21st century contract with America, will have a commitment to have complete control of the border by January 1, 2014.

We’re in the process of drafting a bill now, which would in essence, suspend all regulations and all Federal Law that would inhibit you from completing [a wall on the border]. So, now we would have none of the environmental impact studies, none of the things that make it hard to do. No “the national park can’t be touched,” because it’s an absurdity. How are you going to control the border if you are going to say “No, the Big Ben National Park is going to be an unpatrolled area”?

So, you’ve got to decide if you are going to control the whole border. I believe we can control the border by January 1, 2014. I think we can also establish a guest worker program, and establish English as the official language of government. I think we can with a guest worker program, which I would outsource to American Express, Visa or MasterCard, because they have the technology to run without fraud; the Federal Government doesn’t.

Duggan: What about the expenses? What we are spending for those who are here; Citizens of other governments, citizens of other countries? They show up in our Emergency Rooms, we are providing for their education, how do we recoup for those losses?

Gingrich: Look, I would like to mop up that pool of people who are not here legally in two ways. I have suggested that we may want to re-establish the equivalent of the World War II selective service committees, so you have local decision making and local analysis.

People who have no real ties to the United States, frankly, we should send home. Period. People who have been here a good while, who are married, have kids, have ties, … we should allow them to get what the Krieble foundation calls a “Red Card.” Make them a part of America, but not a path to citizenship. Have them pay a penalty for having come here illegally.

But, get them integrated so that, three years from now there shouldn’t be anybody here who is illegal.

They should either have a red card, because we have decided that they can stay, or they should have been deported, or they should be stopped at the border. Our goal is to have a legal America. I would also, outlaw sanctuary cities. I would say any city which declares itself a sanctuary, loses all federal aid. Period.

So, I say fine, you want to fail to enforce U.S. laws, you don’t get a penny. By the way, all of them will cease to be sanctuary cities in about 3 weeks.

Christine: On the EPA, you’ve talked about replacing it with an Environmental Solutions Agency. You spoke of this wacky proposal by the EPA to regulate dust?

Gingrich: Well, I just did a newsletter, I do a newsletter every week at Gingrich Productions. It comes out through Human Events. The Washington Post wrote this outrageous article that there really wasn’t a dust regulation. Well, it wasn’t true, this was EPA propaganda. The EPA under the Clean Air Act has responsibility for “particulate matter”, it is called dust.

They were looking at regulation that will affect farming by establishing that, if the wind was blowing enough that the dust would leave your fields, then you shouldn’t plow. You talk to farmers who drive down a dirt road and they kick up dust.

I mean, it’s insane. In Arizona they’re in this fight because Arizona is a dessert. They actually have some areas in Arizona where they want them to water down the dirt so that they don’t get these huge dust storms. I met with a group from Arizona who said “we keep trying to explain to the EPA that the reason it’s called a desert is that there is no water, and you want us to take the water that is there ….”

Duggan: (laughing) you have to explain that to the EPA?

Gingrich: Yeah, Look, I think it’s an agency which has, for three generations, self selected radicals who are anti-business, anti-local control and who believe in a radical version of environmentalism at any cost. I would say it’s probably the most destructive anti-manufacturing agency in the Federal Government. No other agency has contributed as much to the decay of American manufacturing as the EPA has.

I say this as someone who taught environmental studies and believes in the environment. I co-authored a book called “A Contract with the Earth, What Conservative Environmentalism is Like.” That’s why I don’t just want to abolish, I want to replace it with a common sense, practical, innovation-oriented agency that starts by collaborating with state and local government and collaborates with business. Not automatically issuing dictatorial rules and litigating everything.

Duggan: Can you tell us how a President Newt Gingrich, would deal better than the other candidates with the Middle East situation, the problem with Israel, the gathering storm of all of these Muslim countries as they are starting to rise and overthrow their governments and really leaning more towards Sharia law than anything, it seems as though Israel…

Gingrich: It has extended now down to Nigeria. There is a war in Nigeria, which is the most populous country in Africa…

Duggan: Are you the most pro-Israel of all of the candidates… Would you like to be thought of as the most pro-Israel candidate?

Gingrich: AIPAC said I was the most pro-Israel Speaker in American history, if that gives you some sense of … Let me …. it’s interesting, because we have this debate on tomorrow night, on CBS and it’s the first time I’m [going to say this] …

Duggan: So we are your practice?

Gingrich: … Yeah it is, and as you can tell I think out loud and I try to evolve and refine, …so let me just give you this, just as background I’m going to talk about this tomorrow night.

When you think about national security, my dad spent 27 years in the infantry. I grew up with the Army.

I am the longest serving teacher in the senior military. I taught one and two star generals and admirals for 23 years.

I started working with the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command in 1979. So, my background in National Security is unlike anybody else’s who is running for President, including the current President. I think I have literally taught every general officer in the last generation at one time or another.

I think we are in REAL trouble. And I think it is much deeper than people understand. If you go to Newt.org and read the 21st Century contract with America you will see part of this. And I will come around to to Middle East in a second.

First of all: China is largely a problem about American self discipline. If we re-build our education, we re-invest in science, technology, and engineering and we re-build our manufacturing base, the Chinese can’t catch up with us in your lifetime. It’s a really about us, not them.

But it’s a real challenge because, at the present rate, we are decaying and they are not. And we can’t ask them to be as stupid as we are.

And this is a real problem because if the Chinese see an imbalance of power, there are a couple of things that they can do that would be very dangerous. And we need to understand that not because they are evil people, but because they are a natural competitor.

Second: We have to really worry about emerging technologies that nobody understands. Hacking is one of those things. The whole concept of cyber warfare and electro-magnetic pulse attack … we have to worry about those kinds of things.

I think we have to worry about nuclear weapons. I was called by Senator Rudman, the father of homeland security. The Homeland Security Department I want has to be capable of dealing with 3 nuclear events on the same day in 3 different cities. Because, I think you really have to worry a lot about getting hit, if you look at the Iranian nuclear weapons. But the fact is, the Pakistanis have over 100 bombs. And Pakistan is not necessarily a reliable, stable country. I mean this is a country that hid bin Laden for at least six years. So, why do we think we can trust the Pakistanis?

So, that’s the background, the other thing I can say is, we have to understand the emergence of the Gray World. The underside of the emerging global market is this gray world: Human trafficking, 800,000+ slaves a year across borders, 90% women, mostly for prostitution and illegal arms trafficking, illegal drug trafficking, etc.

If you look at the Mexican drug war, these guys have billions of dollars and sometimes they can buy technology faster than governments can, so sometimes they are better armed, they have better radios. This is serious. So, those are the real parts of real national security.

John Abizaid who was the only four-star general fluent in Arabic, said to me about two months ago (he is former head of the central command) that our strategic deficit is bigger than our fiscal deficit. So, if you have a two trillion dollar fiscal deficit and our strategic deficit is bigger, it’s a sobering thought. We haven’t come to grips with how big this problem is and how different it is. You are dealing with a world-wide effort to impose on us a set of values we don’t believe in and, if necessary, to do it by terrorism and by force. The truth is, the biggest funder of that is Saudi Arabia, which is why I am for an American energy policy designed to minimize the importance of the Saudis.

A rational American strategy would try to make the Strait of Hormuz irrelevant. Because then you could deal with Iran without any problems and you can deal with the Saudis without any problems. That’s why a major component of our national security is energy.

The Saudis have been paying about two billion dollars a year to schools, madrassas around the world to teach hatred, including here. They’re primary funders of madrassas in the United States, the primary funders of chaplains in prisons which almost always represent ‘Wahhabism’ which is the most extreme version of Islam.

You’ve got the Saudis on one front, you’ve got the Iranians on the other front. There’s a great book by Mark Bowden who wrote “Black Hawk Down”, called “Guest of the Ayatollah”. The sub-title is “the First Shots in Iran’s War Against America”.

Guest of the Ayatollah is the hostage crisis of 1979. So in Mark Bowden’s view, Iran thinks it’s been at war with us for 32 years. And we are confused by it. They killed the Marines in Lebanon. They killed American forces in Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. They are the primary funders of Hamas and Hezbollah. They are the primary protectors of Assad. So I look at this pattern … I believe the odds are very high that we have lost the 3rd Iraq war.

The first Iraq war drove Saddam out of Kuwait in 4 days in 1991.

The second Iraq war defeated Saddam in 23 days in 2003. And then, for reasons that I still don’t understand, Ambassador Bremer decided that we would radically change Iraqi society without having the means to do it.

We have fought a war for 8 years and I think we’ve lost it.

I think as we leave, it will become obvious that we’ve lost it. Nouri al-Maliki (the new head of Iraq) is much more afraid of the Iranians than he is of us.

I mean, this tells you how bad things are: The Iranians held a conference on terrorism and Maliki came from Iraq and Karzai came from Afghanistan to an Iranian conference on terrorism. And the UN Secretary General sent a special envoy as though the Iranians weren’t the largest funders of terrorism in the world.

Now, think about the sheer arrogance of that. It’s Hitlarian in its’ dishonesty.

So I really think we have to re-think from the ground up what we are doing. We have to understand that, in the long run, we are for fundamentally changing Saudi Arabia. We are for fundamentally changing Iran and Pakistan. In the absence of a fundamental strategy, we are just floundering.

I think that there is a grave danger that the Arab spring is going to turn out to be an anti-Christian spring. You look at the decline of Christians from 1,200,000 to 500,000 in Iraq after the American Liberation. So, an American victory meant that over half the Christians have been driven from the country. You look at the Coptic Christians that have been there for 2,000 years being persecuted now in Egypt. You look at the moves towards Sharia in Tunisia and in Lybia and you have to really ask yourself, “why is it that western elites think it’s an advantage to have extremists take over countries?”

Christine: You’ve been very supportive of the Tea Party from the beginning. This Occupy Wall Street movement has been compared to the Tea Party, I know you disagree with that… the comparison.

Gingrich:: Well, there is no comparison. The Tea Party people are almost all committed to a stronger, better America. They are almost all committed to studying and learning the constitution. They are almost always positive in their attitude. They are angry, but they are trying to direct their anger to a positive outcome.

The Wall Street groups break into two groups. One which I can sympathize with. People are just in pain, and angry and saying “Why does Goldman-Sachs get billions of dollars and I lose my home” I don’t think that’s a bad question. It’s classic populism.

The other element of the Occupy Wall Street group is a Nihilist, an anti-civilization thuggery of people who are astonishingly arrogant. Why doesn’t a reporter go up to them and say “Why do you think everybody else owes you a park that you can live in? Why do you think that you have the right to use somebody else’s bathroom?

There’s been violence and vandalism. A hot dog stand was vandalized because they could not afford to feed them anymore. I think there is a childish, temper tantrum part of this and their intellectual framework is leftwing.

I don’t think we have ever been clear enough about this with Obama. Obama is a Saul Alinsky radical. (BOX)

Obama preaches class warfare. He is a natural step towards the hostile parts of the Occupy Wall Street philosophy … because he preaches “These people who are successful are bad”.

Well, guess what, when the president of the United States tells that to America, he’s dividing America. I tell people that I am for the 100%. They ask me if I am for the 99% or the 1%? People ask, “are you for the 99% or the 1%?”

The answer is, and I tell them, “For an American, I am for the 100%, because we are all Americans”. It is a European radical concept to suggest that we can be divided.

And to suggest that Henry Ford, when he was a young man, was in the 99%, but Henry Ford when he invented the modern automobile was in the 1% … so the guy who put all of us on wheels is bad? Bill Gates who put all of us on Windows is bad? Steve Jobs who gave us all iPhones is bad?

I mean, you guys [at the Valley Patriot] are a good example.

Duggan: Can you tell us something nobody else knows?

Gingrich: This probably won’t be new by the time you come out, but it’s new now. You can use this on the radio tomorrow if you like. I was talking to Laura Ingraham (radio host) and I came to understand something in talking to her that I don’t think anyone else has captured yet. In the newest polls I am tied with Romney for second in the CBS poll and I am second to Romney in the Quinnipiac poll. Cain is now in third. So, [Laura] asks, “when are you going to start taking Romney apart?” And I just want you to think about this and you can use this on the radio tomorrow. Romney is at 15% in one poll and 18% in another. That means that in one poll there is 85% of the people available. And in another there’s 82%. So I said to her, I am not going to attack Romney at all. My job is to get the 85%. Let Romney target me. I think that’s the way you need to see this whole campaign. Calista and I will be out there campaigning in a very positive way, trying to help Americans save our own country and rebuild the land that we love. And let the other guys decide to attack us.

TRANSCRIBED BY DAWN BRANTMULLER

All pictures and written material are (C) Copyright, Christine Morabito & Valley Patriot, Inc., 2011, All rights reserved