Newt Gingrich speaks about impeachment, 2020 ahead of campus visit

Ahead of his talk at Bovard Auditorium Tuesday, former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Newt Gingrich spoke to the Daily Trojan about the rise of China, the 2020 election and the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative campus organization, will host the former representative and current presidential adviser for a discussion on his new book “Trump vs. China: Facing America’s Greatest Threat.” 

“The core of my initial presentation [in Bovard] will be about the nature of China and the degree to which we have misunderstood [China] and the need for us to really reassess how we are going to deal with a competitor of this scale,” Gingrich said. 

His new book, which was released Oct. 22, details that America’s greatest competitor is China and that the American system is being challenged by the Chinese system. Gingrich said the U.S. is currently facing two challenges with China — a domestic problem and an international problem.

“We have to recognize that China’s operating on a worldwide basis … and it is very different than what we are used to dealing with,” Gingrich said. “And the Chinese are doing a brilliant job of using free enterprise, the Belt and Road Initiative and Huawei 5G to network together countries all over the place in a way we currently are not close to matching.”

YAF Chairman Maxwell Brandon said he hopes students learn about the real issues facing the country, such as the trade war between China and the U.S.

“China is big in the news right now with the trade war going on, the theft of intellectual property, and it’s something I think is really relevant,” Brandon said. “Hopefully [students] can begin to solidify an opinion on China.”

Though Gingrich has made frequent appearances on television networks in an effort to promote his new book, he has also been a prominent voice related to the current impeachment inquiry. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House will vote on the impeachment inquiry into Trump Thursday, and Gingrich, a vocal supporter of the president, is against the decision. 

“The most accurate way to think of this is that this is a sore loser impeachment,” Gingrich said. “It isn’t about anything that Trump has done. It is about the fact that Trump exists, and 70% of people who favor impeachment favored impeachment the morning after the election.”  

The Daily Trojan could not independently confirm these statistics. 

As house speaker during the late 1990s, Gingrich led the impeachment against former President Bill Clinton. Just months after Clinton’s impeachment, which was determined on a party-line vote, Gingrich resigned from his position after revelations of an extramarital affair with a younger congressional employee garnered attention. 

When asked about the difference between the impeachment proceedings against Clinton and the current inquiry into Trump, Gingrich did not directly answer the question in detail and instead reiterated that the current investigation lacks due process and fails to be bipartisan.

“[The] investigation … violates the right of due process defined in the Bill of Rights and is done in secret by harsh partisans who clearly are bitterly determined to take out Trump,” Gingrich said. “It is an embarrassment. The fact is that you and I have no idea if they have discovered anything because everything is done in secret.”

Gingrich believes that under his leadership during Clinton’s impeachment, he approached the issue with a more bipartisan and transparent approach.

“They don’t let the Republicans have subpoena power, and they don’t let the White House council sit in the room,” Gingrich said. “This whole thing is being done as a hatchet job.”

While Gingrich is staunchly opposed to impeachment, recent FiveThirtyEight polls suggest that 83.3% of Democrats and 47.5% of independents support impeachment. Among Gingrich’s Republican party, only 11.4% of Republicans support impeachment. 

Gingrich also discussed the 2020 election and the upcoming Iowa caucus in February, the first nominating contest of the Democratic presidential primaries. 

“The most interesting thing about next year’s election is going to be whether or not people actually want to follow policies that so clearly don’t work,” Gingrich said. “My personal guess is that [former Vice President Joe] Biden is in trouble — he can’t raise money, and he is also goofy.”

Gingrich predicts that if Biden cannot gain enough support in 2020, Sen. Elizabeth Warren could potentially pose a threat to Trump in the fall.

“Anybody poses a legitimate threat until you beat him, but I think it would be very foolish to think that she’s not [a threat],” Gingrich said. “If you look at the range of her ideas, she would represent such a radical defining of America.”

Gingrich also discussed California politics and was critical of the state’s policymakers, especially regarding the recent wildfires raging across Northern and Southern California. 

“The politics of Sacramento have led to the kind of investment strategies so that PG&E has not put its money into modernizing its lines,” Gingrich said. “We have a power company in America so incompetent that its only solution is to quit being a power company … To turn off electricity to 2 million people, they basically give up being a power company.”

Gingrich will discuss these topics in detail during his talk Tuesday and looks forward to fielding questions from the audience.

“We will toss [the event] open to questions and let the students direct it,” Gingrich said.