It has been said many many times that Donald Trump didn’t get where he got alone. He did not. He stood on the shoulders of a stack of mental and spiritual midgets — not to mention moral amoebas, who had long since departed from any recognizable conservative platform — known as the Republican party. Or, what was left of it, in any event.
They welcomed Trump as their savior, the one who could say out loud the thoughts that they were forced to leave unvoiced. They loved Trump much as the Germans loved Adolf Hitler before it all went totally south. Both men sang the exact same tune. Make (Country) Great Again. And what that translated as, was let bigotry and lawlessness rule the day.
The gloves came off in 2016. Trump improbably won and then he went crazy in 2020 when he predictably lost. Cooler heads in the GOP said “let it go.” He would not. If there was any way he could steal the election and overturn the will of the people, that’s what he was there to do. And Newt Gingrich was right there along with him, talking to the likes of Stephen Miller and Jared Kushner about it. The Hill:
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol is asking former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) to voluntarily sit with its investigators, claiming he advised the Trump team in the days after the former president’s loss in the 2020 election.
“You have knowledge and information directly related to our investigation. Information obtained by the Select Committee suggests that you provided detailed directives about the television advertisements that perpetuated false claims about fraud in the 2020 election, that you sought ways to expand the reach of this messaging, and that you were likely in direct conversations with President Trump about these efforts,” the committee wrote in its letter to Gingrich.
According to the panel, Gingrich was in touch with a number of Trump’s advisors, with his communications ranging from weighing in on ads that he said needed to include a “call to action” to influence voters to even reaching out to high-level White House staff like chief of staff Mark Meadows about how Trump could challenge electors from key states.
The letter details numerous emails Gingrich sent to Trump staff, including one in which he said they needed to promote a debunked conspiracy theory that election workers in Georgia had smuggled in suitcases full of ballots. In that email Gingrich advised that the ads should include a “call to action.” […]
In one email sent shortly after Georgia election officials warned the public of the violent threats made against its workers, Gingrich wrote to Kushner and Miller about the strategy.
“The goal is to arouse the country’s anger through new verifiable information the American people have never seen before[.] . . . If we inform the American people in a way they find convincing and it arouses their anger[,] they will then bring pressure on legislators and governors,” Gingrich wrote.
Here’s a link to the entire letter, if you want to read it. What I find the most disappointing is that Gingrich was talking about “arousing the country’s anger” at a time when people in his own state, notably elections official Gabriel Sterling assured the public that there was no voter fraud and begged the proponents of the Big Lie to stand down. He said, “Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed.” He was “exactly right” in the words of the January 6 Committee.
It’s not surprising in the least. If anybody was the vintage GOP swamp creature, it was Newt Gingrich. This is not new information in the least.
Newt doesn’t deserve that name – they’re actually pretty cute and definitely not dangerous He is as responsible for the state of the GQP and the mess this country is in as McConnell. I hope history books tell the real story about how these two orchestrated the ruination of Democracy.
Well, it’s actually just a nickname. His full name is “Newton Leroy Gingrich.” Of course, he doesn’t really deserve that first name anyway. It’s an insult to both the legendary scientist and the flavorful fruit-filled cookie.
I’m in full agreement about the real newts. If you can influence Dino, who insists on referring to the orange menace as “Oragutan” or “Orangeutan”. this is the last post I’ll be reading at Politizoom. Ive unsubscribed and will not support this site (for which you can thank *any* of the people who post that think it’s cute to use animals to troll evil politicians. No more “turtle” references though I consider “Yertle” acceptable as it’s a made up character.
It offends me as much as the prick himself to hear him referred to as “orangutan or Orangeutan” if not more.
see you, I followed Ursula here when she was boned by Kos. I can’t bear the references anymore.
Thanks for the memories
Newt Gingrich Is an Asshole.
And a Fascist.
😀
Newt Gingrich is a paradox: a shameless politician who is responsible for what the GOP has become and yet ultimately reaped only marginal benefits from having done so. No surprise that his trademark lack of judgment, which is he is like this, has once again bit him in the ass again.
That is a good way to put it, “trademark lack of judgement.” Ironically, when Trump first ran, Gingrich called him a know nothing and said something to the effect that “he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.” And that’s accurate. If Trump had had the slightest inkling of what he was attempting to do, he would have never done it. He is like Chance the Gardener in Being There in that regard. But what Trump know is how to use television and he knows, as P.T. Barnum did, about the rubes in this country and the rest is history.
Ursula: Who did the illustration for this story? I think it’s pretty good.
reverse image search says, “donkeyhotey or donkeyhotey.wordpress.com”
I figured it was DonkeyHotey’s work. It is quite typical. Yes, he is very good (and I use the masculine pronoun because it fits Don Quixote but don’t know that it’s the correct one.0
Newt Gingrich was Trump before (political) Trump was Trump. For us older folk, we can recall a time when Newt was an attention seeking back-bencher in Congress. Someone from a safe enough District that he could routinely throw stink bombs and get some headlines. Bob Dole was known back then as a hatchet man who’d say brutal things sometimes but in comparison Gingrich was an evil, clownish version. Most in the GOP would just roll their eyes, and if they sometimes appreciated his attempts to move the Overton window most of the time the pain wasn’t worth it to them. All that changed when he got elevated to leadership and wound up becoming Speaker of the House.
Again, it’s mostly just us older folks that remember this but Newt was once serious about not having Presidential ambitions – his dream had always been to be Speaker of the House and he successfully bet that while his antics would preclude his ever being President if things broke the right way at the right time he could achieve his dream of being Speaker. Which is a very, very powerful position in DC as anyone reading this knows. And Newt wasn’t stupid – between making and tossing stinky shit bombs he paid attention to the minutia of how the House actually works and was able to inflict his infamous Contract ON America on our nation & we are still suffering the consequences. Sadly, he wielded his power pretty effectively, helped in no small part because Bill Clinton couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.
Eventually Gingrich did get bitten by what Lincoln callled the Presidential grub but he failed to gain traction as a candidate. Unfortunately, Trump who was a much better snake oil salesman than Gingrich did slime his way into the Oval Office. Gingrich fancied himself a GOP version of the legendary Clark Clifford (look it up if you don’t know) and seemed to consign himself to playing a kingmaker role. I guess he did well enough to wrangle himself and his third wife a diplomatic posting to the Vatican. If people wonder why I’m agnostic and doubt the existence of any god, much less a just one and the one talked about in the Bible it’s the fact neither Gingrich or his p.o.s. wife burst into flames every time they crossed an entrance into Vatican City. And especially not when in the presence of the Pope!
He won’t show up. He’ll fight the subpoena tooth and nail and even if he loses he will plead the 5th and/or Executive Privilege to everything but (maybe) stating his name for the record. Alas, a J6 Committee subpoena doesn’t carry the same force for either appearing or answering questions as a Grand Jury subpoena.
The J6 Committee isn’t who he should worry about. THIS DOJ will nail him to the wall if he was dumb enough to do any criming. This description of Gingrich’s political understanding from the Clinton impeachment vis-a-vis Rolling Stone still holds true: “a Classics Illustrated grasp of history, marinated with superhero fantasies.”
Everyone thinks the swamp they need to drain is full of snakes and alligators. But it is the Newt you have to be careful with.
I accidentally purchased a book about the civil war (ghost probably) authored by Newt at a used book store. I started reading it and immediately threw it in the garbage. It was so offensive that donating it was out of the question.
He won’t see a day in jail. Some daddy without a job to pay child support is being cuffed as I type, along with somebody smoking pot in the wrong state in this lie known as the ‘United’ states of America. God what a country. A monument to legal hypocrisy. Bet they don’t teach that in law school.