Speaker 1: This is Gavin Newsom and Newke Gingridge continues, you worked
Speaker 1: on this book, which again is you know, it's very
Speaker 1: much in the spirit of Reagan to you talk about
Speaker 1: his last speech. I mean, I mean that's where he
Speaker 1: talked about Lady Liberty's torch. And you know, we talked
Speaker 1: about that life force of New Americans, et cetera, and
Speaker 1: and and and again. My my fundamental concern about this
Speaker 1: assault on higher education is the impact that we'll have
Speaker 1: in terms of our capacity to get these pH ds
Speaker 1: and stem folks and and to be able to pull
Speaker 1: uh that chill it's already I think having around the
Speaker 1: rest of the world, but pull the best in the
Speaker 1: brightest minds and and and keep them as part of
Speaker 1: that innovation cycle. But you you specifically, I'm you brought
Speaker 1: up in the book, which I loved, the Chinese Exclusion Act,
Speaker 1: and you know, so much of that comes from you know,
Speaker 1: the embers of that are very familiar folks out here
Speaker 1: in the Bay Area. You know, I remember what I
Speaker 1: would refer to unfairly. I would admit this guy Dennis Kerney,
Speaker 1: who was sort of the original Trump, and he began
Speaker 1: and ended every speech by saying, whatever else we do.
Speaker 1: The Chinese must go, and they were building virtual walls
Speaker 1: to keep the Chinese out, and of course the beginning
Speaker 1: of the Chinese Exclusion Act ultimately came out of the
Speaker 1: Bay Area and some of those movements. But interesting to
Speaker 1: me is we're now close to peak immigration. Again. We
Speaker 1: dropped very low in nineteen seventy I think it was
Speaker 1: four point eight percent, don't quote me, and now we're
Speaker 1: closer to fourteen fourteen point eight wherever it is, again,
Speaker 1: don't quote me, but it's significantly grown. How concerned are
Speaker 1: you talk about assimilation? You talked about the things you
Speaker 1: can't talk about from a European prism. But as you
Speaker 1: balance the journey to America and you balance this immigration
Speaker 1: debate and deal with the ish of criminal behavior and
Speaker 1: quote unquote illegal immigration as you refer to it, how
Speaker 1: do we find a balance? How do we strike that
Speaker 1: balance at peril we go back to the instincts of
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties, or go back, frankly to well, I
Speaker 1: mean maybe we're back there today. Curious you're assessment, I
Speaker 1: think no.
Speaker 2: I think first of all, there were two huge challenges.
Speaker 2: One is sheer volume. I mean, you can't have six
Speaker 2: eight nine million people crossing the border illegally. The other
Speaker 2: which I began writing about in the eighties, I was
Speaker 2: visited one of the congressmen in Georgia by vietname. He's
Speaker 2: a small business owner who said that when he came
Speaker 2: over after the fall of Saigon, he and his brother
Speaker 2: arrived and he went straight to work, and his brother
Speaker 2: got hooked up in southern California with the welfare office
Speaker 2: and learned that you could get public housing, and you
Speaker 2: could get food stamps and so forth. And so his
Speaker 2: brother never developed the kind of entrepreneurial drive because life
Speaker 2: was adequate. And it hit me that what had worked
Speaker 2: historically in America, which was very tough, people should not
Speaker 2: kid themselves. You know. Clossa's grandmother came through all As Island.
Speaker 2: We actually went up and looked at her. Her signature
Speaker 2: and her.
Speaker 1: From Poland, Is that right, huh Polish?
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's her grandmother's Polish on her father's side. Ironically,
Speaker 2: since she's been nominated to the ambassador of Switzerland, her
Speaker 2: grandmother on the on the Swiss side, which is her mother,
Speaker 2: is from Burn, So she's actually gone back to her
Speaker 2: grandmother's home area. But the paternal grandmother came from Poland
Speaker 2: in nineteen o eight and you can literally track her
Speaker 2: coming in. Well, every person that came in was inspected
Speaker 2: for health, and if you had a communicable disease, you
Speaker 2: were excluded and sent back. Everybody was checked to see
Speaker 2: if they were willing to go to work, and if
Speaker 2: you weren't prepared to work, you were sent back. I mean,
Speaker 2: it wasn't you know, It wasn't an automatic open door.
Speaker 2: It was it was a it was a controlled open door.
Speaker 2: But there was a second part which was very tough.
Speaker 2: People expected you to become American. They expected you to
Speaker 2: learn English, they expected you to go to work, they
Speaker 2: expected you to be a neighbor, expected you to pay
Speaker 2: the law. And so there's a great deal of socialization
Speaker 2: that went into being an immigrant in the US. We
Speaker 2: went into a cycle which which was captured in a
Speaker 2: book called the Tragedy of American Compassion. UH, where starting
Speaker 2: really in the big way with the great society, it
Speaker 2: became inappropriate to suggest to people that they give up
Speaker 2: whatever wherever they came from. UH, to say that the
Speaker 2: habits and the culture you came from, aren't you know,
Speaker 2: So if you happen to come from a place which
Speaker 2: engages in clinterectomy. Who are we to suggest as a
Speaker 2: matter of women's rights, then maybe that's not a very
Speaker 2: good habit, right. It would be like in the middle
Speaker 2: of the nineteenth century when sutti was still practiced in
Speaker 2: India and widows were expected to be burned on the
Speaker 2: with their husbands. So the question becomes, can we find
Speaker 2: a path back to work? And I voted for all this,
Speaker 2: And in nineteen eighty six we passed the Simpson Zoliac.
Speaker 2: We thought we were giving an amnesty to three hundred thousand,
Speaker 2: turned out to be three million. And Reagan and his
Speaker 2: diary says, I signed the bill because we were going
Speaker 2: to get control of the border, and we're going to
Speaker 2: have a work permit system so we could control immigration.
Speaker 2: And of course he got neither. So is it one
Speaker 2: of the guys who voted for this thing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you were an advocate. I think what in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five, right even before when it was in its
Speaker 1: infancy in bill form.
Speaker 2: So you know, I think you we're not going to
Speaker 2: deport ten or twelve or fourteen million people. No, it's
Speaker 2: not going to happen. We are going to deport most
Speaker 2: of the criminals. And if you are here without having
Speaker 2: yet been a criminal, and you become a criminal, we're
Speaker 2: going to deport you and then once. I mean my
Speaker 2: theory of all this, which may be wrong, but it's
Speaker 2: part of what we did a journey to America is
Speaker 2: to remind people that it's okay to be against illegal immigration,
Speaker 2: but you want to be passionately for legal immigration, and
Speaker 2: you want to recognize that they're dividing lines. I'm very
Speaker 2: concerned about the Dreamers, the people who came here two three,
Speaker 2: four years of age. Tally, they should be treated differently
Speaker 2: than they're being treated right now. It's just it's wrong
Speaker 2: to toss them in as though they're illegal in any
Speaker 2: traditional sense.
Speaker 1: So is it just they're just a political football, then
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 2: Well, and most of them don't speak the language of
Speaker 2: their native country. They grew up in America. For all
Speaker 2: practical purposes, it is their native country. So we couldn't
Speaker 2: have that debate until we got control of the border.
Speaker 2: My guess is that by sometime in twenty seven we
Speaker 2: will begin to have a very healthy debate. People will
Speaker 2: have calmed down and will now be into how do
Speaker 2: we solve this problem as opposed as just being so rigid,
Speaker 2: and it may even happen starting in twenty six. I mean,
Speaker 2: I thought that the speed I don't know what your
Speaker 2: reaction was, but I thought the speed with which they
Speaker 2: turned around the southern border was almost unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean directionally it had significantly declined in terms
Speaker 1: of the total number of border crossings. But unquestionably, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the acuity to which in essence is shut down is
Speaker 1: rather remarkable considering where we were two years prior. But
Speaker 1: clearly the message was delivered a little bit. In the
Speaker 1: last nine months to a year, the Biden administration starting.
Speaker 2: To gradually shift, but then Tom came in and.
Speaker 1: It really no no doubt. I mean, look, rhetoric matters,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious just from that perspect because I think
Speaker 1: a lot of it was rhetorical. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: substantive in terms of some of the moves that he's made,
Speaker 1: mostly rhetorical, I think in terms of the impacts even
Speaker 1: occurring before in the executive orders when in effect, and
Speaker 1: certainly no fundamental legislative shifts yet. But what are you
Speaker 1: what about the rhetoric? What about sort of the pain
Speaker 1: a lot of our diverse communities feel about the rhetoric
Speaker 1: from the President himself. And you know, is it tactical
Speaker 1: you say he supports legal immigration. We saw that debate
Speaker 1: play out with a Bannon Musk frame, But that debate
Speaker 1: is still pretty alive in the base of the mega
Speaker 1: movement right anti immagrant legal too.
Speaker 2: Look, the challenge for Trump's critics on this line of
Speaker 2: reasoning is that he got the highest percentage any Republicans
Speaker 2: ever gotten in the Hispanic community. He got the largest
Speaker 2: percentage of African American males of any Republican since Eisenhower,
Speaker 2: you know, seventy years ago. Right, He's the first Republican
Speaker 2: to get a majority of the Catholic vote. So an
Speaker 2: awful lot of people who are first and second generation
Speaker 2: legal immigrants who are as mad about illegal immigrants as
Speaker 2: people whose relatives came over in seventeen hundred. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's a sense of I paid my dues, I waited,
Speaker 2: I obeyed the law on at frankly, I left these
Speaker 2: people behind. I don't want a Venezuelan gang in my neighborhood.
Speaker 2: And while that's exaggerated, it's real enough, and particularly if
Speaker 2: you look at the people you know who've been killed
Speaker 2: or the people who've been raped. You don't need many symbols.
Speaker 2: No country decide, you know, I don't. That's a risk.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just I miss. What I hate is how it's exploited.
Speaker 1: And as we know, I mean, we all know the stats.
Speaker 1: I mean, native born are more likely to commit crimes
Speaker 1: than forum born, legal or or without documentation. But you're right,
Speaker 1: I mean what you just said is Poe accurate. It
Speaker 1: doesn't take that many examples.
Speaker 2: And I suspect if you limited it down to MS
Speaker 2: thirteen gang members be willing gang members. There are enough
Speaker 2: examples there. You're right, you can earn a living off
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: Look, I get your broader point, but I'm encouraged by
Speaker 1: your core belief that Trump has the capacity, to your point,
Speaker 1: to move if he feels that we've made the progress
Speaker 1: on the border to a much more comprehensive conversation.
Speaker 2: You said publicly that we ought to really be thinking
Speaker 2: about if you graduate in science or engineering, we give
Speaker 2: you a green card with your graduation.
Speaker 1: Well that's been challenged by him eliminating all the foreign
Speaker 1: students at Harvard.
Speaker 2: But we'll see that's now let me suggest to you
Speaker 2: as somebody who's studied Trump a pharamount. There's a there's
Speaker 2: a John Wayne film where it's really mad at somebody
Speaker 2: picks up a chair, breaks it over their head and
Speaker 2: his partner turns and says, God, you get really go crazy.
Speaker 2: As several foreign governments have learned. You take Trump head
Speaker 2: on and he goes nuts, and he says, I'm going
Speaker 2: to prove to you it's classic alpha male. I now
Speaker 2: have to prove to you who's dominant. Well, Harvard decided
Speaker 2: let's test this theory. Okay, So they now have Donald
Speaker 2: Trump about four o'clock every morning figuring out what he
Speaker 2: can do next. And he is going to beat on
Speaker 2: them and beat on them. There's nothing to do with
Speaker 2: the rest of the country. I hope not. Harvard has
Speaker 2: decided to pick a head on fight. They're a big institution,
Speaker 2: They've got a ton of money, they have great prestige,
Speaker 2: and we'll see whether or not they can. This is
Speaker 2: a little bit like in I think it's nineteen o two,
Speaker 2: they have a huge coal mine strike and Theodore Roosevelt
Speaker 2: calls him the coal mine owners and says, this is
Speaker 2: going to it's settled, and the coal mine. Unders say, well,
Speaker 2: you don't understand, we own the coal mines. And Roosevelt says,
Speaker 2: you don't understand. I am the President of United States,
Speaker 2: and I will have the army take over all of
Speaker 2: your minds. And they said, oh, well, let's talk. I mean,
Speaker 2: if Harvard were semi smart, you know, this is a
Speaker 2: losing fight, you know, if they win round one in court,
Speaker 2: because he's going to be there for four years. They
Speaker 2: were in one, win one round in court. The Justice
Speaker 2: Department will be there with round two, three and four,
Speaker 2: and he's not going to give up until they cawtew.
Speaker 2: It's just now he's not necessarily going to go and
Speaker 2: pick a fight with you know, uh, the Ohio State University,
Speaker 2: partly because he likes their football team. As a general rule,
Speaker 2: this is classically Trump behaves. You saw just do it
Speaker 2: to the Europeans. The Europeans said, we don't want to talk.
Speaker 2: He said, fine, fifty percent tariff next Monday.
Speaker 1: And then he negotiates against them.
Speaker 2: Oh facts, you do want to talk?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and then he delayed is the I mean,
Speaker 1: I by the you will you open this door? And
Speaker 1: mister free trade, I remember you back in the day
Speaker 1: I'm old enough to remember after and everything else, and
Speaker 1: that was bipartisan. It was hardly new Gingridge speaker, Gingridge.
Speaker 1: It was celebrated in my party. So you you've evolved,
Speaker 1: a lot of folks have not, just you know, including
Speaker 1: by the way Democrats. I mean, the tariff policies were
Speaker 1: advanced and uh and increased against China in particular during
Speaker 1: the Biden administration, but not across the board, not with
Speaker 1: this fits and starts, not negotiating against ourselves. Tell me,
Speaker 1: you tell me, tell me that you find the approach
Speaker 1: to tariff's under the Trump administration full hearty uh and
Speaker 1: not necessarily productive at this stage? Or am I missing
Speaker 1: this great negotiators capacity to deliver punches like a chess master.
Speaker 1: Five months from now? Are year four? Well?
Speaker 2: I think I think a couple of things. One I
Speaker 2: would say, looking back, I was wrong.
Speaker 1: Do you say that conveniently or do you I mean, no, I.
Speaker 2: Say that because I evolved over ten I'll give you
Speaker 2: the best example. I really thought, as did most of
Speaker 2: the people who studied it, that opening up China economically
Speaker 2: was a great step towards a more open China. And
Speaker 2: I totally misunderstood Dung Challpegs Southern tour where he gave
Speaker 2: the speeches about markets and said, you know, I don't
Speaker 2: care whether it's a black cat or a white cat,
Speaker 2: as long as it catches the rat, and sounded like
Speaker 2: he was really talking about openness. Well, a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago, I did a book called Trump and China,
Speaker 2: and I went back and did a lot of research,
Speaker 2: and I was frankly pretty embarrassed. I mean, Dung Shaopeng
Speaker 2: was one of the twenty four people in Paris who
Speaker 2: create the Chinese Commnist Party. He leaves Paris at the
Speaker 2: end of World War One, goes to Moscow and spends
Speaker 2: a year at Lenin University studying Marxism. Leninism. He is saying,
Speaker 2: and none of us caught this. We have to have
Speaker 2: a market to create enough prosperity to strengthen the party's
Speaker 2: grip on the country, because if people stay too poor,
Speaker 2: they're going to throw the party out. So I'm not
Speaker 2: going to an open market so I can open up China.
Speaker 2: I'm going to open market so I can sustain the dictatorship.
Speaker 2: And by the way, since it is a dictatorship and
Speaker 2: since we are China, if I get to rip you off.
Speaker 2: That's fine, now part of my education. After I left
Speaker 2: the speakership, I was approached by a former Walmart president
Speaker 2: who's going to do a deal in China, and he
Speaker 2: thought having a former speaker would help given negotiating. So
Speaker 2: my lawyer talked to the Chinese lawyers and after he
Speaker 2: looked at the proposed contract, he said, let me get
Speaker 2: this straight. You can you can define what his interest
Speaker 2: is worth on any given day, and you can buy
Speaker 2: it at your definition. They said, yeah, that's how we
Speaker 2: do things. He's not with my client. So it's been
Speaker 2: looking at that. And then in the European case, the Europeans,
Speaker 2: and this is a genuine tragedy, and I think you
Speaker 2: have to read JD. Vans's speeches in Paris and Munich
Speaker 2: in this context. And again I'm a European historian. I've
Speaker 2: lived in four European countries and I have an enormous
Speaker 2: affection for Europe. Historically, the Europeans decided to go to
Speaker 2: litigation and regulation rather than innovation, literally the exact opposite
Speaker 2: of Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: That's interesting.
Speaker 2: In the long run, that's a losing game. So what
Speaker 2: they have to do is they have to somehow tax
Speaker 2: Amazon or Apple or Google or Meta or Microsoft because
Speaker 2: they literally can't compete with them, and this isn't so
Speaker 2: they rig the game in clever ways. And for a
Speaker 2: very long time we operated within a model of somehow
Speaker 2: trying to get to a balanced world where it would
Speaker 2: also you know, the World Trade Organization would work. I
Speaker 2: mean I was for China joining the WTO, and then
Speaker 2: you realize after a while it just this current system
Speaker 2: doesn't work. Now what Trump has done, which I don't
Speaker 2: candidly don't think he's explained very well. Trump is a
Speaker 2: reversion to the late nineteenth century Republican model, best articulated
Speaker 2: by William McKinley, that we are going to have higher
Speaker 2: tariff walls, we're going to have higher paid workers, we're
Speaker 2: going to have huge prosperity, and in the end, because
Speaker 2: we're the largest economy, we have and I mean he
Speaker 2: loves this. Yeah, he knows in every negotiation, including China,
Speaker 2: in the end, he is the bank they're going to
Speaker 2: have to negotiate with it. Sure, And so he's now
Speaker 2: going to have an exciting and enthusiastic six or eight months.
Speaker 2: I tell all of my friends, do not look at
Speaker 2: your stock until August, right.
Speaker 1: Or the lack of stock in the warehouse because of
Speaker 1: all the indecision and the business chill. I mean, a
Speaker 1: lot of people that aren't going to make it five months.
Speaker 1: That's my fear and disproportionate number out here in America's
Speaker 1: largest economy, California, with all that goods movement, that dock
Speaker 1: workers and truckers, and obviously the small business supply chains.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's being felt. It's pretty profound. I hope
Speaker 1: there's an endgame here, but time is not on the
Speaker 1: side of a lot of these small entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2: I think that's right. Look, there's gonna be a lot
Speaker 2: of floundering around, and ultimately we may be at a
Speaker 2: better future, but the interim is going to be I
Speaker 2: tell people, this is not a beer party on a
Speaker 2: houseboat on a quiet lake. This is newing in the
Speaker 2: rapids of a wild river. And that's just a fact.
Speaker 1: All right, Let's go back, just briefly, because I'd be
Speaker 1: remiss if we didn't talk about it. So I here's
Speaker 1: this is how I spent my Memorial Day. I somehow
Speaker 1: landed on a New Hampshire town hall that you and
Speaker 1: President Clinton conducted together. It was shockingly civil tuned in
Speaker 1: because I was expecting the opposite, and the fact that
Speaker 1: the President of the United States, the Speaker of the
Speaker 1: House of Representatives, at the peak of their differences, engaged
Speaker 1: in a civil conversation. It makes me long for those
Speaker 1: days or wait or not, because my reflection was one
Speaker 1: of critique and constant you know, just you know, confrontation, victriol,
Speaker 1: government shutdowns. So which was it? What was your relationship like?
Speaker 1: Do you remember that day in New Hampshire? What the
Speaker 1: hell were you two thinking? And what's happened to our
Speaker 1: country since? And how how much do you feel, mister
Speaker 1: speaker in the lunch conversation responsible for the first some
Speaker 1: of that sort of toxicity as some have described in
Speaker 1: our politics as a relations to the relationship that you
Speaker 1: had with our party, our party with you and the
Speaker 1: contract with American Oh.
Speaker 2: Wellther you just managed to ask about three different questions.
Speaker 1: I did, Yes.
Speaker 2: So off, Gwen and I had a I think remarkably
Speaker 2: good personal relationship. We were about the same age group,
Speaker 2: We're both we're both inherently graduate students. We like to
Speaker 2: sit around and shoot the breeze about occasionally late at night.
Speaker 2: I go down and have a drink with him, and
Speaker 2: we just bsked. I mean it was just you know,
Speaker 2: as you know, he is one of the great Yes,
Speaker 2: it's in American history. I mean all that does relax
Speaker 2: and let him roll for a while. And so in
Speaker 2: that sense, what happened was which was, which was? And
Speaker 2: I wrote a book on it called March to the Majority.
Speaker 2: We spent sixteen years growing on Majority. All of it's
Speaker 2: standing on Reagan's shoulders. The contract is entirely Reagan, but
Speaker 2: when we won, because we had based everything we were
Speaker 2: doing on the American people, So every single item in
Speaker 2: the contract is seventy percent or better. There's a big
Speaker 2: fight in the White House in June of ninety five
Speaker 2: and Reagan's staff, I mean Carter Clinton's staff says, you've
Speaker 2: got to fight Gingrich. You know, you owe it to
Speaker 2: the to the party. And Clinton, Clinton, who had been
Speaker 2: beaten in nineteen eighty for reelection and knew that there
Speaker 2: wasn't fun, said to them, I do that. I want
Speaker 2: to lose. I'm not going to fight Gingrich. I'm going
Speaker 2: to protect the things that I have to protect, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to take shots I didn't want to can
Speaker 2: but I want to work with him because if I
Speaker 2: work with him, I'll probably get reelected, and I like
Speaker 2: being in the White House. And it was a huge braw.
Speaker 2: I mean I remember one point, Leon Panetta. We were
Speaker 2: in a negotiating session and Panetta was screaming at him
Speaker 2: and saying, you can't give that away. We had Democrats
Speaker 2: who lost their seats because they voted for that, and
Speaker 2: Clinton's long, yeah, but I don't want to lose my seat,
Speaker 2: you know, And then he turned to me and said,
Speaker 2: I guess I can't do that one. This may surprise you.
Speaker 2: We negotiated for thirty five days, face to face. We
Speaker 2: produced this.
Speaker 1: I mean literally the two of you in the room,
Speaker 1: not outsourcing.
Speaker 2: Staff other people around, but the two us sitting across
Speaker 2: the table for thirty five days, and we produced the
Speaker 2: only four balanced budgets in a century. And we did
Speaker 2: it because we listened to each other and we talk
Speaker 2: with each other. Now, I was a harsh partisan for
Speaker 2: a reason you'll understand perfectly. I mean it's what you
Speaker 2: have not You haven't really had the kind of quality
Speaker 2: of opposition you should have in California that Methought goes
Speaker 2: out and spends sixteen years and gradually becomes the majority,
Speaker 2: which is tragic. It's not good for the state.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hear you again. I mean I get that
Speaker 1: argument absolutely, yeah, so sincerely, Yeah, No, So I.
Speaker 2: Had to be polarizing because I'm the minority. I mean,
Speaker 2: if I'm going to get in, I've got to make
Speaker 2: sure that people decide not to vote for the Democrats.
Speaker 1: And so it's not your natural state. I mean it was,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean it was. It was a very
Speaker 1: intentional strategy.
Speaker 2: I mean, like this, because I think in some ways
Speaker 2: you'll identify my natural state is winning.
Speaker 1: There you go, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: If sitting for thirty five days wins, I'm for winning fighting.
Speaker 2: If closing the government for twenty seven days is a
Speaker 2: necessary prelude negotiate, I'm for closing the government for twenty
Speaker 2: seven days. But they were It's not a personality thing.
Speaker 2: They were instrumentalities of getting something done.
Speaker 1: And so that town Hall sort of reflected that that
Speaker 1: you guys had a civil conversation outdoors in New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: I think he said you happened to be there already
Speaker 1: he was coming down. Do you remember it at all?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Bo Bob Dole had we had this deal. Don't
Speaker 2: wanted to run for president, and he didn't want me
Speaker 2: because I was the brand new guy on the block
Speaker 2: and I was nationally pretty popular at that time. He
Speaker 2: didn't want me to run for president. So he loaned
Speaker 2: me his entire New Hampshire organization, and I went up
Speaker 2: and toured New Hampshire. And while we were up there,
Speaker 2: we suddenly heard, Oh, Bill Clinton's going to be here,
Speaker 2: and so we promptly said to the press, wouldn't it
Speaker 2: be great to get together and have a debate about
Speaker 2: or a dialogue about election reform. Well, the White House
Speaker 2: suddenly gets this call from the press corps. Is the
Speaker 2: President willing to sit down with new Gingrich in New Hampshire.
Speaker 2: You can imagine what Clinton's staff said. Wow. And so
Speaker 2: they then interviewed me, and I said I'd be delighted
Speaker 2: because a great thing for America to have the two
Speaker 2: of us told, oh, I wish one. Clinton goes, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess we'll do it. And if you watch it,
Speaker 2: I mean he's very good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean candidly, it was not I didn't
Speaker 1: enjoy it. You were. You were very good. I mean,
Speaker 1: answered tough questions. I mean a lot of seniors are
Speaker 1: there and you're talking about, you know, cuts to their
Speaker 1: programs and others. I mean, it was, it was, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a remarkably civil conversation at the highest level.
Speaker 1: And but there's not been anything like that since well.
Speaker 2: You know, it was a tragedy. There's a book called
Speaker 2: The Pact, written by guy I think a Duke, in
Speaker 2: which he found all the papers, interviewed people. Bill and
Speaker 2: I actually had an agreement in late ninety seven that
Speaker 2: we were going to launch an effort in ninety eight
Speaker 2: to reform Medicare and social security, and he would do
Speaker 2: it in the State of the Union. I would do
Speaker 2: it in a major speech in Georgia, and we were
Speaker 2: going to work together. And then Lewinsky occurred. Well, at
Speaker 2: that point I had to become partisan, and he had
Speaker 2: to go to the left because it was the left
Speaker 2: that was going to save him, and so boom. But
Speaker 2: the book's kind of fascinating because it's really true. We
Speaker 2: did a lot of We created the Heart Rudman Commission,
Speaker 2: which was the deepest and biggest review of national security
Speaker 2: since nineteen forty eight. And actually after I stepped down,
Speaker 2: even though I had helped him impeach him in the house.
Speaker 2: They called him, said would you like to serve on
Speaker 2: the commission? Since you created it? She said yes, So
Speaker 2: so it just did that kind of relationship.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating. And you reminded me of the impeachment. I mean,
Speaker 1: so what do you And it was the third part
Speaker 1: of that three legged stool question. And forgive me for
Speaker 1: not articulating it more effectively. But and again this is
Speaker 1: not an indictment, but it was in the conversation of
Speaker 1: Lunch who said he was never more proud to be
Speaker 1: associated with anything than the Contract with America, which was
Speaker 1: fascinating to me, how quick he was to not only
Speaker 1: defend it, but how reverential he thought it was at
Speaker 1: the time, in terms of just being a communication document,
Speaker 1: how it had transparency, how it did represent, as you said,
Speaker 1: the will of the American people, at least in terms
Speaker 1: of the seventy percent threshold, and the fact that you
Speaker 1: submitted it to the public, meaning you tested that theory.
Speaker 1: But the impeachment, the toxicity, the winning at all costs
Speaker 1: hardly new in novel and politics. So I'm not suggesting
Speaker 1: you're the OG in this space. But the tea part
Speaker 1: people connect this moment to those moments? Is that fair unfair?
Speaker 1: Did Democrats oversimplify?
Speaker 2: I think we founally mishandled the impeachment, and I think
Speaker 2: it was partly because of Kenneth Starr. In my mind,
Speaker 2: the impeachment was about committing perjury, and it actually goes
Speaker 2: back to arguments we have today about one or not
Speaker 2: whether the Supreme Court is ruled. And I suspect that
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court already ruled, we wouldn't have had a
Speaker 2: leg to stand on. But the question was it was
Speaker 2: pretty clear that he had been convicted of committing perjury,
Speaker 2: which you know is a follow me, and in fact,
Speaker 2: he later on was barred from practicing law for five
Speaker 2: years in Arkansas. I thought it was important as a
Speaker 2: matter of constitutional record that a president should be held accountable.
Speaker 2: But when Starr came out with his report, it was
Speaker 2: so lurid and so related to sex that it poisoned
Speaker 2: the whole project. I'll never forget that summer. I was
Speaker 2: home in August and my two daughters and I went
Speaker 2: to lunch at Okay Cafe, and and they both looked
Speaker 2: at it, and they said to me, if our four oh
Speaker 2: one case get destroyed, because of some stupid intern We're
Speaker 2: going to be really pissed off. I thought, okay, I
Speaker 2: had clearly misunderstood the American people and how they were
Speaker 2: going to rank, how this was going to work. And
Speaker 2: in a way, Clinton's a whole behavior from ninety two
Speaker 2: on changed the whole context in which you deal with
Speaker 2: sexual issues in politics. Yeah, you couldn't imagine the Hillary
Speaker 2: Clinton Donald Trump the last debate in a pre Bill
Speaker 2: Clinton world. That's insponsible.
Speaker 1: Well, and of course Bannon bringing out the ghosts of
Speaker 1: the past in the front row of that debate as well.
Speaker 2: That it was Bannon who said to me, we concluded
Speaker 2: she was going to go to the basement and we
Speaker 2: were going to get there first.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a look. Look in closing, give me
Speaker 1: something more optimistic. Are we get Look, I'm new scum? Yeah,
Speaker 1: mean here we are. I appreciate your book. Like June third,
Speaker 1: we got We've got Trump's triumph. But in new scum
Speaker 1: everything's scum. This, this sort of divisiveness, this everyone's longing
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to get damn back together
Speaker 1: and start to solve problems.
Speaker 2: Says a historian, One of two things has to happen either,
Speaker 2: there has to be a very concerted effort to reach
Speaker 2: out and to try to find bipartisan ways to work together.
Speaker 2: I just did a podcast with Ted Cruz, who had
Speaker 2: worked with the Amy Kloboshar, the Democrat from Minnesota on
Speaker 2: the cour you would be very aware of just last week,
Speaker 2: jump sign that bill right, totally bipartisan. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 2: possible that you could see just enough bipartisanship on practical
Speaker 2: things begin to reknit the system. Uh. Otherwise, what has
Speaker 2: to happen is one side of the it has to win.
Speaker 2: I mean, historically, when you're in a period where both
Speaker 2: sides think it's life and death, and both sides think
Speaker 2: they potentially could win or lose, the drive to more
Speaker 2: and more extremism. I was right struck. Alan Gwelso is
Speaker 2: an extraordinary professor of Abraham Lincoln, and Welso wrote me
Speaker 2: at one point in the two thousand and four campaign
Speaker 2: and said, the level of vitriol against Trump resembles the
Speaker 2: level of vitriol against Lincoln among Southern slaveholders in the
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty campaign. He said, you can row almost an
Speaker 2: exact parallel, and it's because both the left in its
Speaker 2: modern form, and the slaveholders actually saw their way of
Speaker 2: life about to be extinguished. I mean Trump is a
Speaker 2: mortal threat if you're AOC. He's not just a competitor.
Speaker 2: But if he wins, her world has shrinks radically. So
Speaker 2: you either have to get to a point where one
Speaker 2: side clearly one this is FDR in thirty four thirty six,
Speaker 2: where he wins so decisively that everybody operates within the
Speaker 2: Rooseveltian world Jefferson after eighteen hundred, I would hope you
Speaker 2: could have a combination. That is, I encourage constantly finding
Speaker 2: ways to be bipartisan, because I think it's better for
Speaker 2: the country. It's how the founding fathers designed the system.
Speaker 2: They wanted to make it so hard that it's very,
Speaker 2: very difficult, as we just saw in the House, for
Speaker 2: a purely partisan effort to work. Yeah, and that's by design.
Speaker 2: I mean they wanted to avoid dictatorship by creating a
Speaker 2: machine so hard to work that we can't we can
Speaker 2: barely get it to work voluntarily.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. And you have a chapter in the
Speaker 1: book you talk about the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary,
Speaker 1: and you know, and our pride and the best of
Speaker 1: Greek democracy and the Roman Republic, three co equal branches
Speaker 1: of government. I hope that's the spirit that defines that.
Speaker 1: I have two final questions over under simple questions, Speaker
Speaker 1: Jeffreys sixty percent.
Speaker 2: Chance, oh forty five?
Speaker 1: Okay, Well see we're gonna have to have another episode
Speaker 1: on that. And then twenty twenty eight, President Vance.
Speaker 2: Probably runs against Governor Newsom. Vice President Advance runs against Advance.
Speaker 2: And look at some of your other candidates. I mean,
Speaker 2: the governor, of all due respect, the governor of Illinois
Speaker 2: as a presidential can give me a break.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not getting the middle, but I would
Speaker 1: not be at all shocked to have a Newsome Advance election.
Speaker 1: Well that's a hell of a way to end this podcast.
Speaker 1: By the way, I appreciate you doing this. Uh it's
Speaker 1: it's a hell of a thing, and I hope folks
Speaker 1: got a lot out of it. I certainly did. And
Speaker 1: congratulations on your forty fourth book, Trump's Triumph on sale
Speaker 1: June third, good sale. Good to see you, Thank you, sir.
Speaker 2: It was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed it.